Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos shares company's plans for Warner Bros Discovery: 'When we buy the studio...'

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos has revealed the streaming giant's plans for Warner Bros Discovery once it acquires the studio. In a recent interview, he said the combined entity will release more movies than the two companies did separately. With plans to boost overall content spending in the upcoming years, the announcement shows Netflix's commitment to increasing its capacity for content production and releasing them in theatres through the possible acquisition.

In an interview with the New York Times, Sarandos said, “When we buy the studio, we'll be releasing more movies together than we were separately. Our forecast is to grow the content spend of the combined companies several years out. So it's really good news for the town that we're going to continue to grow the business.”

Why Netflix's co-CEO thinks Paramount taking over Warner Bros can be bad for the industry

In the interview, Sarandos also expressed his concerns about Paramount taking over Warner Bros. He said, “On the Paramount side, between the $3 billion that they’ve already cut and the $6 billion they’re proposing, those are real jobs. That’s cutting back on production. That endless search for profit by cutting people, jobs and making fewer movies — that’s not our intention at all. We need all those movies. We need all those TV shows.”

“If you take a beat and think about who’s been building and who’s been collapsing, it’s the best news possible,” Sarandos added.

What Ted Sarandos said about criticism Netflix faced after announcing the Warner Bros deal

When Netflix announced its deal to take over Warner Bros, many people were angry, as they were concerned about the company’s reluctance to support theatrical releases. Replying to this, Sarandos noted, “I think it was a lot of loud voices, but not necessarily a lot of them. I think a lot of it was folks who questioned, rightfully so, our intent with theatrical because we hadn’t said anything about it. A lot of it was the emotions around that more than anything else.”

Sarandos also revealed that he was not surprised by the reaction. He said, “I honestly think there would have been reactions like that from anyone who was going to do the deal. What people would like to see is no deal. But that’s not possible. There are two outcomes of this deal, and we have a signed deal.”

Apart from this, Sarandos also noted what Reed Hastings, Netflix chairman and co-founder, thought about the deal. He said, “Reed’s more in the build vs. buy mode. In total, Reed is not an enthusiast about these kinds of deals, but he was very supportive of it.”

“We’ve never been buyers — we’ve always been builders. I’ve said that pretty proudly. And it’s true. Once the company was in play, it would have been reckless for us not to look at it. The opportunity to get into the books and understand the business model better, and what we saw there was that there’s a real there there for us. Their products would work better in our business model, and our business model would work better with their products in it. And that was very telling for us. We had a lot of assumptions that weren’t necessarily true,” Sarandos added.