The typical output deal from a studio is 10 to 14 movies a year.
— Ted Sarandos
Netflix is distributed in 50 countries around the world. It's an incredibly affordable, well-distributed product that gives anyone with access to the Internet and a screen access to content in a very affordable way.
In the first week of release, 'Beasts Of No Nation' was the most watched movie on Netflix, in every country we operate in.
I always love that phrase, 'Oh, this is a good idea, but it's execution dependent.' As if anything in life is not execution dependent. Breathing is execution-dependent.
I really loved the 'Sopranos' but didn't have HBO. So someone would send me tapes of the show with three or four episodes. I would watch one episode and go: 'Oh my God, I've got to watch one more.' I'd watch the whole tape and champ at the bit for the next one.
Within the U.S., you could have argued that most people who watch 'Mad Men' would watch 'House of Cards.' But the viewing is much more on par with the large-scale mainstream things like 'The Walking Dead.' It was much younger than we thought.
I have a deep respect for the fundamentals of television, the traditions of it, even, but I don't have any reverence for it.
It's a massive consumer frustration around the world about how long they have to wait after the U.S. to see television shows and movies. In the U.S., there's the frustration of having to wait a year to watch a movie in the format that you choose.
To me, cinema is not a movie or a TV screen, and it's not a seat in a building versus one in your living room. It's the art of motion pictures.
When we started looking at the bigger television ecosystem, you see that there's not that many serialized TV shows being made for TV. The economics are lousy: They don't sell into syndication well; they're expensive to produce.
The longer people watch Netflix and the longer they stay members - they're the criteria of success for us.
The television business is based on managed dissatisfaction. You're watching a great television show you're really wrapped up in? You might get 50 minutes of watching a week and then 18,000 minutes of waiting until the next episode comes along.
The major international appeal for 'House of Cards' was kind of a surprise because it's a very American show. What we learned is that American politics is very American, but greed and corruption and all of that is very global.
Being able to compete for consumers' attention and dollars over the preciousness of access is a thing of the past. Everyone is using the Internet to globally market a product.
If you want to go out and see a movie and sit in a dark room with strangers, it's not an experience you can replicate at home.
Typically on a TV series, the writers on a show are writing for their life almost every episode. When someone sits down to write a Netflix show, they know there's going to be a 13th hour.
Movies are becoming more global, which is making them less intimate. If you make a movie for the world, you don't make it for any country.
'Walking Dead' has done great on Netflix, but to pay for the full output deal just to get 'Walking Dead' didn't make sense.
The two things that got everyone's attention about the 'House of Cards' deal was the two-season commitment and David Fincher. After David Fincher directs a series for Netflix, no one else can say, 'Well, I'm not going to direct a series for the Internet.'
