Ted Sarandos: Last News

Netflix is three years into its games initiative and said it will release about a game a month starting in July – so now – in its Netflix Stories series based on the giant streamer’s IP.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor What the long-term impact of generative AI will be on Hollywood is “hard to predict,” Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said — but he took a shot at addressing it anyway. Sarandos, speaking on the streamer’s Q2 earnings interview, said, “I think that AI is going to generate a great set of creator tools, a great way for creators to tell better stories.” And, he said, the business case for generative AI isn’t to reduce costs but to improve the quality of storytelling.

This week used to be nail-biting time in Hollywood as the studios nervously unfurled their summer blockbusters and prayed for lines at the box office. That time is bye-bye.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos cut the ribbon on a major expansion of Netflix Studios Albuquerque and said the facility has racked up nearly $900 million in total investment in New Mexico production since 2019.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Netflix cut the ribbon on its newly expanded studios facility in Albuquerque at a grand-opening event Thursday in New Mexico. Netflix acquired ABQ Studios in 2018 for a relative steal in a deal worth $30 million and the company scored additional state and local funding as well as production tax credits.

David Fincher is reportedly working on a remake of Netflix‘s hit dystopian South Korean series Squid Game.According to a report from The Playlist, Fincher has reportedly been working on the series for around two years, though neither Netflix nor the Fight Club director have confirmed the production.Per The Playlist, Fincher first decided to work on a Squid Game remake shortly after the Korean series’ release in 2021, which was a pop culture juggernaut, spawning a reality competition and an upcoming second season. The publication also reports that Fincher has hired writer Dennis Kelly for the project.

K.J. Yossman Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix, paid tribute to the streamer’s U.K.

Netflix has renewed big-budget Indian drama series Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic Next week, on June 7, the entertaining and highly acclaimed geek-goes-undercover-as-contract-killer screwball romantic thriller “Hit Man,” starring It Dude of the moment Glen Powell, drops on Netflix. But this weekend, in case you hadn’t noticed, the movie opened “in theaters.” How many theaters? If you use your hands and feet to count, you’ll have most of them covered. Netflix, the company that did for streaming what McDonald’s did for fast food (made it everyone’s new normal), always likes to make a big show of when it’s playing a movie “in theaters.” It has long amused me to see entertainment journalists get suckered into this public-relations gambit, for the simple reason that so many of them live in New York and L.A., where the tiny number of theaters occasionally playing a Netflix movie tend to be.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos isn’t getting too worried about the rise of artificial intelligence in Hollywood. During a recent interview with The New York Times, Sarandos said he doubts AI platforms will ever replace Hollywood professions such as screenwriters. “I have more faith in humans than that.

Ted Sarandos, the Netflix co-CEO, denies claims that AI threatens Hollywood’s creative jobs.

Michaela Zee Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a recent New York Times interview that the 2023 blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” would’ve “enjoyed just as big an audience” on the streamer as they did in theaters. While discussing what type of content isn’t right for Netflix, Sarandos said, “I don’t think that there’s a clean answer because the best version of something may work really well for Netflix but just hasn’t worked to date.

Naman Ramachandran Back in 2019, on a visit to Los Angeles, celebrated Indian director Sanjay Leela Bhansali stopped in at the offices of Netflix. In his informal five-minute meeting with CEO Ted Sarandos, Bhansali pitched an idea — it would be an opulent tale of warring courtesans set amid India’s struggle for independence. Sarandos greenlit the project on the spot.

Two weeks from today, finally, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures will open its new permanent exhibition, Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital. For many, it amounts to an act of completion. A Hollywood film museum without a special tribute to Jewish roots has felt for the last two-and-a-half years like a church without a tabernacle, a history made up of footnotes without the text.

Ellise Shafer The Royal Television Society has revealed the dates and initial speakers for its annual RTS London Convention. This year’s event will take place on Sept. 17 at Kings Place in London and is chaired by Anna Mallett, Netflix‘s vice president of production for EMEA and the U.K.

I never liked Tom Ripley but I keep meeting him.

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos saw a 2023 compensation package valued at $49.8 million, down a hair from the year before but with one big change — he took more in stock option awards than in cash as the streamer shifts its pay policies.

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter As Netflix‘s new film chief, Dan Lin’s mandate is to focus on quality — and quantity. Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos shed light on Lin’s strategy as the producer takes over film duties from Scott Stuber, who announced in January he was leaving the streamer.

It has only been one month since the 96th Academy Awards ended, but this week it looks like the race for the 97th has (un)officially begun.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent With one week to go before the press conference unveiling the 77th Cannes Film Festival Official Selection, director Thierry Fremaux is pledging to remain zen — despite wrestling with submission delays, reverberations of Hollywood’s double strikes and high expectations after last year’s edition unveiled Oscar winners “The Zone of Interest” and “Anatomy of a Fall.” This year’s edition is already heating up, with George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” confirmed to premiere at the festival and Quentin Dupieux’s “A Second Act,” starring Léa Seydoux, set as the opening night film. In his first and only interview ahead of the lineup reveal, Fremaux tells Variety all about this year’s edition, including his hopes to welcome back Francis Ford Coppola with “Megalopolis” and Yorgos Lanthimos with “Kinds of Kindness,” his appeal to Ted Sarandos to lure Netflix back on the Croisette, his stance on France’s new #MeToo reckoning, the presence of female directors at the festival and how geopolitical turmoil may shape the Official Selection. Last year was a milestone year for the Cannes Film Festival. How did you approach this year’s lineup, and how many films have been selected so far? The unanimous feedback we got is that 2023 was a really great year.

Michael Schneider Variety Editor at Large Warner Bros. Television Group chairman/CEO Channing Dungey is returning to the Banff World Media Festival this June to serve as one of its keynote speakers, the event announced on Wednesday. Dungey joins a lineup that also includes Fox Entertainment CEO Rob Wade as a summit series keynote.