Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos recently cemented his feelings about the state of the movie theater business, calling it an “outdated concept” while speaking at the Time100 Summit. But not all filmmakers who make movies at the streaming giant share the same sentiment.
While speaking with Rian Johnson during the promotion of the second season of his Peacock series “Poker Face,” Business Insider asked the writer-director, who’s behind Netflix’s popular “Knives Out” movie franchise, if he agreed with Sarandos’ comments.
“Obviously I don’t, because I love movies. I love going to see movies,” Johnson said. “But also, I have a feeling talking to Ted, it would be a different thing than one quote taken and kind of tossed at me in this context. So, I don’t want to phrase this as I’m having a proxy discussion with Ted right here.”
Still, Johnson was adamant that people want to see movies in theaters. “I think theatrical is not going anywhere,” he said, pointing to the box office success of Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and “A Minecraft Movie.”
“I think we’ve seen if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it, and that experience of being in a full house and having that experience is so important,” he continued. “It’s something that I love and I want more of in the world.”
Netflix has long been focused on releasing movie titles on streaming for its global subscribers. This has led to movies like the 2024 Millie Bobby Brown starrer “Damsel” and the 2021 Ryan Reynolds/Dwayne Johnson action movie “Red Notice” logging hundreds of millions of views on the service.
“We’re in a period of transition,” Sarandos said at the Time100 Summit of the state of theatrical releases. “Folks grew up thinking, ‘I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them and play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows.’ It just doesn’t happen anymore. It’s an outdated concept.”
However, Netflix does own movie theaters: Los Angeles’ Bay Theater and New York’s Paris Theater, which are key for the streamers’ award season titles, as they are required to have theatrical runs for consideration. The streamer has also given select other titles theatrical play, like Johnson’s previous “Knives Out” movie, 2022’s “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” though it was only released on around 700 screens. Greta Gerwig’s upcoming “Narnia” movie for the streamer is also set for an IMAX run before it hits Netflix on Thanksgiving.
For his part, Johnson hopes the next “Knives Out” chapter, “Wake Up Dead Man,” which he says will be released in the fall, will be in more theaters than “Glass Onion.”
“I want this in as many theaters for as long as possible,” he told BI, adding that he loves working with Netflix and that they have been great partners. “We’re going to push for everything we can get in terms of theatrical, because I want as many people as possible to see it in that form.”
Business Insider reached out to Netflix for comment but did not receive an immediate response.
