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One of the commercial cutaways at the Golden Globes last week showed Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav amiably chatting with Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos. The two looked like rich kings who were basking in the wealth of their newly doubled fortunes after arranging a marriage between their heirs. I’m referring, of course, to the merger that’s rattled Hollywood: Netflix’s purchase of WB for $82.7 billion (no matter the huffing and puffing from David Ellison at Paramount/Skydance). These mega entertainment mergers have been going on for years, and none of them are good for artistry, free speech, or a working middle class. Still, the industry has been especially anxious about Netflix acquiring a legacy studio, given the streamer’s pitiful extremely limited windows for releasing movies — even their own! — in theaters exclusively before they’re made available to stream. Netflix seems to be aware that they need to convince a lot of people they’re not about to annihilate movie theaters, which explains this new interview Sarandos did with the New York Times:

I think people are still skeptical about this new commitment to the theatrical business.
I understand that folks are emotional about it because they love it and they don’t want it to go away. And they think that we’ve been doing things to make it go away. We haven’t.

When this deal closes, we will own a theatrical distribution engine that is phenomenal and produces billions of dollars of theatrical revenue that we don’t want to put at risk. We will run that business largely like it is today, with 45-day windows. I’m giving you a hard number. If we’re going to be in the theatrical business, and we are, we’re competitive people — we want to win. I want to win opening weekend. I want to win box office.

Do you regret saying that the theatrical business was an “outmoded idea”?
You have to listen to that quote again. I said “outmoded for some.” I mean, like the town that “Sinners” is supposed to be set in does not have a movie theater there. For those folks, it’s certainly outmoded. You’re not going to get in the car and go to the next town to go see a movie. But my daughter lives in Manhattan. She could walk to six multiplexes, and she’s in the theaters twice a week. Not outmoded for her at all.

But Netflix as a business proposition has changed the way people watch movies. Fewer people leave their house to see movies the way they used to because of Netflix.
You have to give them something to watch. And I think we’ve got to take ownership of the idea that when people are excited to go out and see something, they go. You’ve seen it in our “Stranger Things” finale experience. You saw it in our “KPop Demon Hunters” experience with people. You give people a reason to leave the house, they will gladly leave the house.

I would say one of the other myths about all this is that we thought of going to the theaters as competition for Netflix. It absolutely is not. When you go out to see a movie in the theaters, if it was a good movie, when you come home, the first thing you want to do is watch another movie. If anything, I think it helps, you know, encourage the love of films.

I did not get in this business to hurt the theatrical business. I got into this business to help consumers, to help movie fans.

Do you think theater owners believe that?
I’ve got a great relationship with theater owners.

They just went to Congress to tell them how bad this deal would be for them.
Like I said, there’s only two outcomes of this deal. We’re going to be the buyer who keeps Warner Bros. running, releasing movies in theaters the way they always have. That keeps HBO completely intact. It keeps Warner Bros. television, producing television, and it creates jobs.

[From NY Times]

Nicole Sperling conducted this interview for the NY Times, so she gets my hearty applause for clapping right back to Sarandos with “They just went to Congress to tell them how bad this deal would be for them,” when Ted tried to play it off like he’s super chummy with theater owners. There’s so much in this interview to loathe, all from Sarandos’ corporate-speak answers. Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg brilliantly lampoon Hollywood executives in The Studio, but at the end of the day, at least Seth’s character is someone who loves movies. But Sarandos? Maybe he does, but he sure didn’t communicate that in this piece. At all. He gives “emotional” a negative connotation when using it to describe people upset with the merger deal, then turns around and refers to films as “products.” As for his telling us all to calm down, they’re keeping WB’s 45-day theatrical release window — of course we have to ask, because then why wasn’t Netflix giving their own movies a longer release time in the first place!