This Is Why Netflix Doesn’t Have Any Plans to Put Its Movies in Theaters

Why market a new big-budget movie when you can just do nothing?

Marketing is all about promising a customer something entertaining and worthy of their precious time. But streaming has done something remarkably strange over the past few years when it comes to advertising the newest films or series. 

Instead of spending thousands of dollars on posters and other marketing essentials, streamers like Netflix simply dump their newest releases on its platforms and wait to see what does well within 28 days. 

Sure, Netflix does market their bigger budget productions like Stranger Things and recent release The Grey Man, but often new series and movies will just appear.

Netflix’s Tudum fan event, which began in January 2020, is an in-person event in one market, São Paulo, Brazil. On Saturday, the streaming giant’s fan event quintupled in size and went global, offering fans of Netflix to indulge in everything and anything the company has to offer. Named for the streaming service’s iconic start-up sound, Tulum is now made up of five events from around the world, offering “more content, more shows and movies, more talent, more news to break,” according to Netflix chief marketing officer Marian Lee in a telephone interview with IndieWire.

Lee and her team are no strangers to good marketing, which is what Tudum's primary function is. At this summer’s Comic Con, Netflix created an interactive experience that allowed fans to experience being Six (Ryan Gosling) and Lloyd Hansen (Chris Evans) from The Grey Man a week before the film’s release. 

The experience must have worked, since The Grey Man is Netflix’s fourth most-popular movie on record. The success prompted Netflix to franchise the film, giving The Grey Man a sequel and a spinoff series.

But just because the film did well for the streaming giant doesn’t mean that they are ready to start putting films into theaters.

“Netflix is the place that we want fans to watch films that they love, or sit down with their family to watch a new movie,” Lee said. So far, the system is working for Netflix since they do not have to spend too much on their almost non-existent marketing.

“From a marketing perspective, what we’re doing is different than major studios who are trying to sell a ticket,” Lee said. “But, again, we’re trying to drum up anticipation and excitement for our [movies] so that people can ultimately watch them on Netflix.”

Lee explained that the streamer is “not focused on getting [movies] into the theaters for the short run… for the (award show qualifiers. To me, our fans are on Netflix and that’s what they prefer.”

The reason Netflix doesn’t put its films in theaters is simple. The company doesn’t want to spend the money to market the movie or put it in theaters when its brand is all about watching from the comfort of your own home. 

While I would like for them to debut bigger movies in theaters and on the streaming service on the same day since it is calling itself “a major movie studio,” Netflix will continue to only put its Academy Award-worthy movies in theaters for a limited time and leave the rest to sit in that vast library. 

Would you watch a big-budget Netflix movie in theaters? Let us know what you think in the comments below!