Last year, Netflix said movie theaters were dead.
At the Time100 Summit in April 2025, co-CEO Ted Sarandos called the theatrical model outdated. Most people, he argued, don’t live close enough to a multiplex for it to matter.
Around the same time, in an interview at the Paley Center, he pointed to declining box office numbers and asked: what is the consumer trying to tell you?
The implication was clear. Streaming wasn’t just winning. It had already won.
And then this week, in a Politico interview, Sarandos said something very different. He explained that Netflix has been having “really healthy conversations” with exhibitors. He expects a “much more creative relationship” with movie theaters going forward.
So, just to recap:
Theaters are dead.
The theatrical model is outdated.
We will collaborate with theaters.
If your head is spinning a little, like you just got dropped into the middle of Everything Everywhere All at Once, you’re in good company.
What do we learn from this? Not that Sarandos was wrong last year. And not that he’s right now.
Just that in this business, things spin quickly. The job is to keep your head on straight.
There’s a version of the entertainment industry that we all wish existed. In that version, things move in clean lines. One model replaces another. Old systems fade out. New ones take over. You pick a lane, commit, and then build your career or make plans for your project accordingly.
Of course, what actually happens is much messier. The industry doesn’t evolve in straight lines. It overcorrects, experiments, doubles back, and then rediscovers the very things it declared obsolete two years earlier.
Streaming didn’t kill theatrical. It disrupted it. Theatrical didn’t disappear. It got clobbered by the pandemic and is figuring out how to adapt. And now, the two are starting to collaborate.
Which isn’t really a plot twist. It’s just another turn.
And I’ve been getting a front-row seat to this lately.
I’ve been spending a lot of time learning more about theatrical distribution on a feature film of mine called Original Sound. And let me just say this: booking a theater is not for the faint of heart. It’s not a system you plug into. It’s a maze you navigate. A lot of moving pieces. A lot of people trying to make it work.
I’m still in the middle of it, so I’ll share more once I see where the maze ends. But even at this stage, one thing is already very clear: distribution is not a set of lanes. It’s a constantly shifting landscape.
So if Netflix is now exploring theatrical partnerships after publicly dismissing the model, it’s not because they suddenly had a change of heart. It’s because they’re responding to reality as it unfolds.
Audience behavior is fragmented. Attention is spread across platforms. Live experiences are gaining momentum. Digital distribution is still dominant. None of these things cancel each other out.
And increasingly, they overlap. Everything is happening everywhere, all at once.
The creators who are gaining traction right now are the ones building work that can move within this fluid landscape. Projects that aren’t locked into a single outcome. Stories that can live in more than one form. Ideas that can meet an audience in different ways, depending on the moment.
That doesn’t require a massive budget or a multi-platform empire. It requires a shift in mindset. Less “where does this belong?” and more “where could this go?”.
If the head of Netflix can pivot, it’s a good reminder that none of us need to be quite so rigid. The wall between streaming and theatrical wasn’t torn down. It was never as solid as it looked. The appearance of permanence was just a simplified, soundbite-y story of a very complicated business.
So don’t feel the need to pick a lane. Build something that can travel. Because in this version of the entertainment industry, flexibility isn’t just helpful. It’s how you keep your head on straight.
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