Ted Sarandos has pushed back again on comments by James Cameron that Netflix’s planned acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery would be “disastrous for the theatrical motion picture business”, saying he had been left “quite confused” by the Avatar director’s comments.
The Netflix co-CEO was asked in an interview on the BBC’s Today program on Monday about Cameron’s harsh rebuttal of the deal in a February 10 letter U.S. Senate’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competitive Policy, and Consumer Rights.
“It doesn’t hurt. I would say it was quite confusing,” said Sarandos. “I had personally met with James on December 20. We talked through our commitment to 45-day theatrical exclusivity for the Warner Brothers slate… of course that’s what he does, that’s all he does… We spent five minutes of our conversation on that, and we talked mostly about these glasses that he’s developing for Meta… To have him come with such an impassioned statement seems disingenuous.”
Sarandos, who in the UK for the Bafta awards on Sunday evening and a visit to the UK’s National Film And Television School to unveil a $1.35 million donation on Monday, batted back suggestions that the Netflix model was as odds with the theatrical production and exhibition business.
“It’s completely untrue. The best thing for our business is for people to love movies and television, and the best way to love movies is to watch them at home, in the theaters, wherever you want to watch them,” he said.
“We don’t lose any business to the movie theaters. In fact, the more people see movies, the better, deeper, richer relationship they have with movies. And that’s a good thing… it feeds both ways… an average Netflix member watches seven movies a month, this is U.S., but the average person in the U.S. goes to the cinema twice a year. … people are very romantically attached to the idea of going to a movie palace, the curtains opening and sharing a movie with 2,000 people. But that’s not exactly how people are experiencing it.”
Talking up the Netflix-Warner deal, Sarandos said it was a growth move while the Paramount offer was based on cuts and would ultimately shrink the theatrical film business.
“This is a vertical merger. We’re buying assets that we don’t currently have. We’re buying a movie studio and a distribution entity that we don’t currently have. We’ll be adding to the market, where Paramount has committed that they’re going to cut $6 billion out of the business right away, and then to de-lever that business after this deal closes, they would, they would need to spend and cut an additional $16 billion. You look at that and think, ‘Wow, this industry will be much smaller under that ownership than it would be under Netflix ownership,” he said.
Sarandos was talking just hours before the ending of a seven-day period granted by Warner Bros. Discovery for discussions with Paramount over its counter bid, aimed at seeking clarity for WBD stockholders.
Speaking to the Deadline team on the red carpet of the Bafta ceremony on Sunday night, Sarandos accused Paramount of trying to circumvent its signed deal and challenged the studio to make a better offer.
Netflix won the first round of the battle to acquire WBD’s streaming and studios division on December 5, with a $82.7 offer, which would see it take control of it film and television studios, HBO Max and HBO. Paramount launched a counterbid on December offering $108.4B for the entirety of the WBD and hinted it will go higher.
Asked by the Today program, whether Netflix would up its offer, if Paramount was to come up with an improved offer today, Sarandos hinted the streamer could go higher too.
“I don’t want to do hypotheticals. This is part of the process. We very much like the deal where we’re at right now. We’re very disciplined buyers, and we always have been. So I think this is a spectacular opportunity at a price, and we have to figure out what that price. This is all process of price discovery,” he said.
The deal, which is expected to take months to get over the line, has been mired in regulatory procedures, with news breaking over the weekend that the Department of Justice had launched an investigation into whether the deal would give Netflix a monopoly.
English (US) ·