Netflix engagement growth: Sarandos’ candid 2% admission
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos conceded that Netflix engagement growth is lagging behind his own goals, but he told the Bloomberg Screentime conference Sept. 30 that the business is still healthy and that he does not regret the company’s failed pursuit of Warner Bros. He spoke hours after a federal judge cleared the last hurdle for Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Deadline reported.
Sarandos on slowing Netflix engagement growth
Engagement, the time subscribers spend watching, has been Netflix’s headline metric since it stopped reporting subscriber numbers, a change Deadline noted came almost two years ago. It rose 2% on roughly 200 billion hours of viewing in Netflix’s most recent report, Sarandos said. Variety put that figure as year-over-year growth for the first half of 2026.
“Yes, overall we’re not growing as fast as I want us to, and we’re working on making that move faster,” Sarandos said, according to Deadline. He blamed part of the slowdown in Netflix engagement growth on “incredible headwinds from things like the World Cup” during the period.
He argued that raw Netflix engagement growth is not the whole story, because not every viewing hour is worth the same. Live events take about 5% of Netflix’s content budget and produce about 1% of its viewing, he said, but those hours are more valuable. He noted that an hour of “Judge Judy” in the middle of the day does not bring in the revenue that an hour of NFL football does.
Despite the modest Netflix engagement growth, Sarandos said the company posted “double-digit revenue growth in every region of the world” last quarter.
No regrets on Warner Bros.
Netflix won the bidding for Warner Bros. in December 2025 with an $82.7 billion deal, but Warner Bros. Discovery later accepted a higher offer from Paramount for the entire company. Asked if he regretted the attempt, Sarandos said no.
“I think we won the deal at some point, so we priced it right,” he said, according to Variety. He added that the bid was the highest price at which he believed Netflix could still return value to shareholders.
Sarandos was noncommittal about the threat from a combined HBO Max and Paramount+. “On paper so far, it’s one and one, so I don’t know if one and one is two, or one and one is one and a half, or one and one is three,” he said, per Deadline.
Casey Bloys and talent deals
Sarandos played down rumors that he had courted HBO content chief Casey Bloys after the two had a widely reported lunch in March. “He’s going to be in a very good position wherever he goes, he’s a super talented guy,” Sarandos said, according to Deadline. Bloys is expected to oversee the merged streaming business, as Total Apex has reported.
He also addressed the end of several overall deals, including David Fincher’s. Sarandos said Netflix has worked with Fincher since 2011 and that the director has not made a film elsewhere since 2014. “It is not like he’s leaving to go somewhere else to do something else,” he said, adding that Netflix plans to keep working with him.
Theatrical plans
Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” will be Netflix’s first film with a conventional theatrical rollout next year, playing 49 days in theaters before it starts streaming April 2, Variety reported. Sarandos said “Charlie vs. the Chocolate Factory” will also get a big wide release.
Sarandos said a “KPop Demon Hunters” sequel would get “a very broad theatrical release.” The first film won the Golden Globe for best animated motion picture. Netflix put more than 30 films in theaters last year, each with its own plan for run length, marketing and cities, he said.
He also pointed to Netflix’s distribution deal with French broadcaster TF1 as an example of the company becoming “much more nimble” about new ways to watch.