Sarandos apparently pushed back on the idea, but Hastings was adamant, telling him, “‘No. In fact, if you think you’re still gonna be getting your entertainment on cable, you should not only [not] take this job—don’t buy my stock when I go public,'” Sarandos remembered. “So he laid this out. I wasn’t even sure I believed him, to be honest with you. But I thought that this guy, this is the kind of person who changes the world in some dimension.”
And the rest, as they say, is history, and surely the basis for an Oscar-bait biopic someday. (Sarandos said that early on Hastings told him, “I’m gonna build a company that’s gonna be around way after me”—Aaron Sorkin, take notes!) Sarandos was ultimately elevated to co-CEO, bringing to the business insights like “we couldn’t just jam the two cultures” of tech and entertainment together, which Hastings recognized “right away.” Ted Sarandos helped Netflix establish strong relationships with talent via bold moves like ordering two seasons of House Of Cards sight-unseen, and offering the team full creative freedom.
He also continues to help spin the argument that Netflix is not killing the entertainment industry. In fact, he said on the podcast he thinks Netflix is saving it. “A lot of people get wrapped up in the idea of how things used to be. And there’s something to that. There’s something great about what inspired me to do what I’m doing now, [which] is that stuff that I watched when I was young,” he said. “So for me it’s like, yeah, if people now would like to stay home and watch movies on Friday night instead of going to the theater—let’s meet the customer where they are and make great movies for them.” Movie theaters aren’t closing because of Netflix, he argued, but “because people’s behavior changed.”
