Netflix CEO Says Movie Theater System Is “An Outdated Concept,” Believes Streamer Is “Saving Hollywood”
Ever the company’s biggest cheerleader, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos believes that not only is the overall concept of ‘the movie theater experience’ completely outdated, but that the streaming giant’s disruption of traditional release norms is actually “saving” the Hollywood industry.
Sarandos, who served as Netflix’s Chief Content Officer for slightly over two decades before being promoted to his current role in 2020, offered this bold self-progress report while speaking with Time magazine Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs during the recent 2025 Time100 gala and summit.
“Have you destroyed Hollywood?” Jacobs asked to open their time together, per recaps of the discussion provided by The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.
“No,” replied Sarando, “we’re saving Hollywood.”
From there offering his thoughts on just why Netflix is currently thriving while the traditional studio system is struggling to survive, the CEO asserted, “Netflix is a very consumer-focused company.”
“We really do care that we deliver the program to you in a way you want to watch it,” he continued. “We really do care that we deliver the program to you in a way you want to watch it, and it’s a program that you love and desire. So we don’t let a lot of other outside forces get in the way of that.”
To this end, Sarandos then pointed to the ongoing decline of global box office pulls and asked, “What does that say? What is the consumer trying to tell us? That they’d like to watch movies at home, thank you.”
“The studios and the theaters are duking it out over trying to preserve this 45-day window that is completely out of step with the consumer experience of just loving a movie,” the CEO opined. “We’re in a period of transition. Folks grew up thinking, ‘I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them [and to have them] play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows … It’s an outdated concept.”
Pressed by Jacobs as to whether he thought making movies “for movie theaters, for the communal experience” was “an outmoded idea”, Sarandos affirmed, “I think it is — for most people, not for everybody.”
“If you’re fortunate to live enough in Manhattan, and you can walk to a multiplex and see a movie, that’s fantastic,” he argued. “Most of the country cannot.”
Closing out his thoughts on this particular part of their discussion, Sarandos told Jacobs that while the ongoing implosion of the theater model does not “bother” him, “What would bother me is if people stopped making great movies.”
“If we want people to watch them the way we want them to watch them,” he declared, “then people won’t be able to make movies anymore because there won’t be a business for it.”
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