Netflix CEO Vows Warner Bros. Movies Will Keep Hitting Theaters After Studio Sale
Fresh off Netflix’s takeover of Warner Bros., Ted Sarandos moves to steady Hollywood, confronting fears that theaters will be sidelined and previewing how the new regime will handle release windows.
Everyone freaked out a little when Netflix bought Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion. The big question: would Netflix do what Netflix does and shove everything straight to streaming? Ted Sarandos says no. In fact, he says the exact opposite.
Netflix is suddenly a theatrical studio
Speaking at a UBS conference in New York, Sarandos made it clear that when the deal closes, Netflix will be in the movie-theater business for real, not just dabbling.
"When this deal closes, we are in that [theatrical] business, and we’re going to do it... We didn’t buy this company to destroy that value."
He went further, saying Netflix plans to release Warner Bros. films the same way WB has been doing it: actual theatrical runs, not a quick token week before they disappear into the app.
Why that promise matters
Historically, Netflix has treated theaters like a marketing pit stop. Some films get a short window (think two weeks) on a limited number of screens. Example: Knives Out 3 is getting that brief theatrical pop, but it’s not exactly a full-court press.
Sarandos basically said: if Netflix had owned WB two years ago, this year’s WB slate would have rolled out in theaters the same way it did. Translation: the studio machine keeps running as-is, because that’s where a lot of the money is.
The receipts he pointed to
- Minecraft Movie: nearly $1 billion worldwide on a $150 million budget.
- Superman and Sinners: together, almost another $1 billion at the box office.
- Weapons also got name-checked among the year’s WB winners.
In other words, WB had a very good year at the box office. Netflix says it didn’t buy into that to mess it up.
The weird twist from the sidelines
Since the Netflix deal was confirmed last Friday (December 5), Paramount lobbed a $100 million all-cash bid and complained that Warner Bros. Discovery "never engaged meaningfully" with their earlier attempts to talk. Which... compared to $82.7 billion, $100 million sounds like a rounding error. Make of that what you will.
The bottom line
Netflix is publicly committing to keep Warner Bros. as a theatrical-first operation once the acquisition closes. If Sarandos sticks to that, your big WB titles should keep landing in theaters the way they have been—just with a streamer for a parent company that’s finally decided theaters are worth the hassle.