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Beasts of No Nation

After a buzzworthy festival circuit from Venice to Toronto, Cary Fukunaga‘s war epic Beasts of No Nation was recently released in art house cinemas across the U.S. and U.K. in addition to being made available on Netflix streaming. Despite its critical adoration, the drama, which marked the streaming giant’s crusade into original feature film production and distribution, went on to “bomb” at the box office. In an attempt to stop the bleeding for the company’s prized Oscar candidate, Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos did something that Netflix has never done before: release viewership numbers.

Sarandos at the 2015 Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.

During an interview with Deadline, the politically astute Sarandos states his company’s “focus is on the total audience” (as opposed to theatrical box office). Beasts of No Nation, which stars Idris Elba and young newcomer Abraham Attah as rebel soldiers fighting for vigilante justice in an undisclosed West African nation, has accrued “over 3 million views already” in just North America since its October 16 release. (For reference’s sake, Netflix has somewhere in the neighborhood of 45MM subscribers in North America.)

Though the harrowing subject matter would seem uninviting to theatergoers seeking escapism, Sarandos boasts a universal appeal with Beasts, particularly in countries that aren’t necessarily chomping at the bit to see a United States-backed art house film with limited theatrical release:

Even Japan, and I’m only calling out Japan because most specialty films don’t do very much of their box office outside the U.S. at all, let alone in Japan. Studios have trouble opening those movies in Japan. This was No. 1 in really diverse places in the world — Japan, Brazil, Mexico, places where these films typically never even open. It’s been incredibly gratifying to see these audiences respond to this film.

As budding feature film producers and distributors, Sarandos nixed the idea of Netflix cutting out the middleman and just buying up a bunch of theaters completely:

Operating theater is definitely not in our wheelhouse. We have plenty on our plate — operating the largest global streaming service on the planet and trying to bring films like this to a big audience. Versus worrying about whether the seats are comfortable and the popcorn’s fresh.

If Netflix were to venture into theater acquisition, they could be doing themselves a disservice by taking people out of their homes and away from their nightly Netflix fix, which Sarandos confirmed in so many words.

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. But it is a very good experience, to watch a movie at home in 4k, in the comfort of your living room. That’s the way most people see their movies. It’s a very sexy thing to talk about whether there’s a feud, but I think what’s really happening here is that we’re offering consumers a lot of choices they didn’t have just a few years ago. It’s interesting, the whole debate and us spending a lot of time talking about windows, and theater owners and splits. Consumers, they really don’t care about any of that. They just want to make a great movie, and I don’t think they make the same distinction we do, as to where they see it. Watching a movie is an emotional experience, and we have a bunch of business metrics we attach to that emotional experience.

As they venture further into the realm of original film with Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father, the Brad Pitt-starring War Machine, Adam Sandler’s The Ridiculous 6, and the Duplass Brothers’ four-feature deal, it seems tactical for Netflix to show no box office fear. Because as studio releases grow increasingly expensive for theatergoers to see, it’s awfully appealing to stay in and indulge in your $9.99/month subscription, which now includes blockbuster caliber Disney and Marvel properties in addition to Netflix Original features.

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Photos: Netflix, Getty