Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is desperate. He really needs this Warner Bros deal to go through, but it won’t be easy with Paramount’s David Ellison continuously upping his bid for the company.
It’s come to the point where Sarandos has now picked up the mic and is directly speaking to us about his intention to keep the status quo over at Warner Bros if he acquires the studio.
His message, he claims, is an intention "to release all the Warner Brothers movies in cinemas the same way they do today" if the Netflix-WB deal goes through.
"It's a very successful company with an incredible legacy of film," Sarandos tells Variety in Paris. "We didn't buy the company to to harm any of the value that currently exists."
Sarandos’ job is to push the Warner Bros. deal through as quickly as possible and to downplay any pushback from an industry that has sharpened its knives for him. That’s it, that’s all. That said, I just can’t ever believe his promise to keep theatrical windows intact.
Here’s what I wrote last week:
Sarandos is the same man who called theatrical release “an outmoded idea.” The same man who claimed that watching Lawrence of Arabia on your phone was “just as good” as seeing it on the big screen. The same man who insisted that Barbenheimer would “have had the same cultural impact” if it had gone straight to Netflix. And the man who labeled theatrical release an “inefficient” way to distribute a $200M movie.
My gut tells me Netflix is finished here. I don’t see them closing this deal. In the end, I expect Paramount to come out on top—they’re operating with a startup mindset, and as the bidding escalates, I doubt Netflix will be willing to pay the price.
For now, Warner Bros. Discovery is set to reject Paramount’s hostile bid, which will then have Ellison going directly to the shareholders, and after that, I expect a bidding war to ensue between Paramount and Netflix.
Netflix and Skydance Animation have also called it quits. The two sides announced Monday that they're ending the animated film deal struck back in 2023, framing it as a mutual decision.