The “KPop Demon Hunters” sequel will get a “broad theatrical release,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos revealed Wednesday while discussing the streamer’s embrace of longer theatrical windows.
“When the ‘K-Pop Demon Hunters’ sequel comes, you can expect a very broad theatrical release,” Sarandos said at Bloomberg Screentime in Los Angeles on Wednesday evening.
But before then, Netflix will give its first full 45-day theatrical window to “La Bola Negra,” and it won’t be the last. Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” is also getting a wide theatrical release next year, as is the animated “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory.” And the David Fincher-directed, Quentin Tarantino-written, Brad Pitt-starring “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” is the first Netflix movie to get an IMAX release in November, just in time for Thanksgiving.
“What we’re doing is looking at this model and saying, ‘okay, how do we serve movie lovers who may want to see this movie in a theater,’ and ‘how do we not harm value to Netflix?’” Sarandos said. “How do we position the film best in the world?”
Sarandos explained that expanding the streamer’s theatrical footprint aims to meet a passionate audience where they’re at, explaining that “movies in the box office are not necessarily bigger on Netflix.”
“The most passionate audience went to see it in the theater, so by the time it comes to Netflix, you’ve lost that passionate audience, and you got the people that go, ‘Oh, I meant to see that,’ or ‘I’ll get around to that,’” he said.
It’s why, Sarandos noted, that in the streamer’s data reports the top movies watched are Netflix originals, which beat out the pay TV window titles, with the exception of kids and family movies that he notes “get a lot of rewatching.”
But a critical part of the theatrical strategy is dividing up releases from arthouse films like “La Bola Negra” to that of wide appeal family movies like “KPop Demon Hunters.”
“‘Train Dreams,’ last year — that could have played in the theaters for six months and … it would have done net positive to those kind of arthouse films, and then the other end is the four quad[rant] family rewatch movie … so we said let’s take those two and treat them different,” he said, noting the wide releases for both “Narnia” and “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory.”
