Netflix held its earnings call this week, the quarterly event coming at a time when a lot of discussion is swirling around not just the future of cinema and theatrical releases, but studios themselves.
Warner Bros. Discovery announced this week that it has already received multiple unsolicited offers for acquisition, with the trades reporting that Netflix was one of those interested parties.
Yet, Netflix has indicated in the past that it has no real interest in purchasing a legacy studio, and that approach has not changed. Speaking with THR in an after-market analyst call, he says when it comes to merger and acquisition opportunities, they assess them like any investment – namely, if there is additional value in ownership.
He seems to indicate Netflix has ‘little interest’ in purchasing Warner Bros. Discovery:
“Nothing is a must for us to meet our goals that we have for this business… We’re predominantly focused on growing organically, investing aggressively and responsibly into the growth and returning access cash flow to shareholders.
We have also seen a wide range of outcomes from such mergers. So watching some of our competitors potentially get bigger via M&A does not change in and of itself, at least our view of the competitive landscape.
We’ve been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks, so there is no change there. But in general, we believe that we can be and we will be choosy.”
Also not majorly shifting is their strategy towards theatrical releases. Sarandos says “there’s no change in the strategy” on that front, adding that “Our strategy is to give our members exclusive first-run movies on Netflix”.
In fact, he sees a big part of the success of the singalong version of “KPop Demon Hunters” in cinemas was “because it was first released on Netflix… We had something that people fell in love with, but not in a huge way, on the first day or even the first weekend.”
Instead, it was the fans watching it on repeat that drove the film higher in the recommendation engine, with social media doing the rest of the heavy lifting. He adds: “If anything, this actually reinforces our strategy, because being on Netflix actually allowed the film to build momentum.”
Netflix is still flirting with limited runs, such as they currently are with “Frankenstein” and will do so again shortly with “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery”.
