Rian Johnson not so sure movie theaters are "outdated," actually

Johnson said he was pushing for his next Netflix-made Knives Out movie to be "in as many theaters for as long as possible."

By William Hughes  |  May 2, 2025 | 10:29pm
Rian Johnson and Ted Sarandos, Photo: David M. Benett/Dave Benett/Getty Images for Netflix
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Rian Johnson not so sure movie theaters are
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Last month, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos made some comments on the movie business that were both fairly predictable and weirdly inflammatory: He claimed that movie theaters, as a concept, are “outdated,” suggesting that directors who dream of their films playing “on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them and play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows,” were, basically, fooling themselves. (“It just doesn’t happen anymore,” he added.) It’s not clear, at the time, whether Sarandos (who was giving a talk at the Time100 summit) knew how irritating his comments were going to be for basically every director who works with Netflix for the next year or so, who will now get to field the exact kind of question that Knives Out‘s Rian Johnson was forced to diplomatically navigate while just trying to get through a day of stumping for Poker Face season two this week. To wit: Does he agree with Sarandos that the theatrical experience is an outdated concept?

Johnson (talking to Business Insider) gave the quick, clear, and human answer first, saying, “Obviously, I don’t, because I love movies. I love going to see movies.” He then pushed back on the framing that he was getting into a “proxy discussion” with Sarandos—”I have a feeling talking to Ted, it would be a different thing than one quote taken and kind of tossed at me in this context”… before giving a further elaboration that ran pretty much exactly counter to Sarandos’ assertion that people “like to watch movies at home, thank you.”

“I think we’ve seen if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it,” Johnson said, pointing to the current successes of Sinners and A Minecraft Movie. “And that experience of being in a full house and having that experience is so important. It’s something that I love and I want more of in the world.” This is not, of course, a purely philosophical question: Johnson has a Netflix-produced movie, his third Knives Out film Wake Up Dead Man, coming out later this year. “I want this in as many theaters for as long as possible,” he said of the film. (While also being careful to talk about how much he likes working with Netflix as a partner.) “We’re going to push for everything we can get in terms of theatrical because I want as many people as possible to see it in that form.” (Glass Onion, the previous Netflix-produced Knives Out movie, got an unusual single-week run in theaters before being pulled back to feed into Netflix’s ever-hungry servers.)

 
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