Ted Sarandos Says ‘Barbie’ & ‘Oppenheimer’ Would Be Just As Big On Netflix; Credits Algorithm For ‘Baby Reindeer’s Success

Armando Tinoco

26 May 2024 at 9:18 pm·2-min read

Ted Sarandos is commenting on the box office success of Oppenheimer, Barbie, and their Netflix series Baby Reindeer.

In a new interview, the Netflix CEO said that the films starring Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy would’ve been just as big on the streaming platform.

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“Both of those movies would be great for Netflix. They definitely would have enjoyed just as big an audience on Netflix,” Sarandos said in an interview with the New York Times. “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.”

Barbie and Oppenheimer, directed by Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, respectively, were big box office winners. The film about the Mattel doll has pulled in over $1.446 billion, while the film about the atomic bomb made over $976 million.

Netflix recently took the world by storm with the limited series Baby Reindeer. The story created by Richard Gadd is based on his life and his experience dealing with a stalker. Sarandos credits the series’ success to Netflix’s algorithm, which recommended the show to international audiences.

“There was a time when something like Baby Reindeer would not even be seen in the United States. And if it did, it’d be on PBS once,” Sarandos told NYT. “It’s very, very big in the U.K., and in that way that Netflix does, it gets picked up in the algorithm and starts getting more and more presented, because when something gets that big in one country, it’s likely there’s a lot of audience for it outside of that country. And it’s been an enormous hit around the world.”

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