Rian Johnson may be partnered with Netflix for his Benoit Blanc mysteries, but he hasn’t turned his back on theatrical releases.
After Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos stirred controversy earlier this year for calling movie theaters “outdated,” the Knives Out filmmaker was asked if he feels the same way.
“Obviously, I don’t,” Johnson recently told Business Insider. “Because I love movies. I love going to see movies.”
After acknowledging that he doesn’t have the full context for Sarandos’ comments, Johnson pointed to the recent box office success of Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Jared Hess’ A Minecraft Movie as proof that audiences still have an appetite for seeing movies on the big screen.
Emma McIntyre/WireImage; Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
Rian Johnson and Ted Sarandos
“I think theatrical is not going anywhere. I think we’ve seen [that] if you put a movie people want to see in the theaters, they are going to show up for it,” Johnson argued. “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.”
In fact, Johnson wants the same thing for Wake Up Dead Man, his upcoming Knives Out mystery slated to hit Netflix later this year.
“I want this in as many theaters for as long as possible,” Johnson said of the film. “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.”
Netflix has occasionally broken with its tradition of releasing directly to the streamer for select films, though the theatrical run has always been limited. Many of the streamer’s Oscar contenders followed this path, including The Irishman, Marriage Story, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, The Power of the Dog, and Roma.
In 2022, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, saw the streamer partner with major theater chains to play the film in 600 movie theaters nationwide for one week, about a month before its streaming launch.
John Wilson/Netflix
Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Josh O’Connor and Daniel Craig in ‘Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.’
Johnson’s comments come after Sarandos appeared at the Time100 Summit last month and said, “We’re in a period of transition. Folks grew up thinking, ‘I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows.’… It’s an outdated concept.”
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He argued that making movies for theatrical release is “an outmoded idea,” because not everyone has immediate access to cinemas.
“If you’re fortunate enough to live in Manhattan, and you can walk to a multiplex and see a movie, that’s fantastic,” Sarandos said. “Most of the country cannot.”
Netflix is next teaming up with IMAX to give Greta Gerwig’s Chronicles of Narnia movie a 2026 theatrical release on Thanksgiving Day, which will see the film play for two weeks before hitting Netflix on Christmas Day.
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