Netflix Co-CEO says ‘’Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ would have been just as big’ if released on OTT

Sarandos dismissed the idea that certain films need to be seen on a bigger screen and said that this 28 year old son watched David Lean directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on his phone. (Image via X)

Ted Sarandos, the Co-CEO of Netflix, recently had a conversation with New York Times and said that he believes the 2023 box office hits ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ would have thrived on a streaming platform.

Sarandos told the publication that he is confident that both the films would have found a massive audience on Netflix. He dismissed the idea that certain films need to be seen on a bigger screen and said that this 28 year old son watched David Lean directed ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on his phone.

He said, “And so I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that certain kinds of movies do or don’t work. There’s no reason to believe that the movie itself is better in any size of screen for all people. My son’s an editor. He is 28 years old, and he watched ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ on his phone.”

Netizens immediately started voicing their disagreement.

One user on X wrote, “Not him literally saying that cinemas are NOT important. Depressing”

Another user wrote, "If my son watched Lawrence of Arabia on his phone I would not be bragging about it.”

Sarandos also talked about what kind of content is not right for Netflix, “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. There’s some obvious ones, like we don’t do breaking news and that kind of thing, because I think there’s a lot of other outlets for it. People aren’t looking to us for that.”

According to Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s original movies “are attracting some of the biggest audiences in the world.”

The theatrical releases of Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ and Christopher Nolan’s ‘Oppenheimer’ earned $1.44 billion worldwide and $951 million, respectively. They were the biggest films of 2023 and even gave birth to the cultural phenomenon ‘Barbenhemier’. This cultural impact would have not been possible if these films went straight to OTT.