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Netflix might put Greta Gerwig's 'Narnia' in Imax theaters. Will it create a streaming blockbuster?
When Netflix releases big movies, even the ones that resemble Hollywood blockbusters, its approach is consistent: Get people to watch them on the streaming service, not in theaters.
In the cases where Netflix does put its films in cinemas, it does so in a limited fashion, primarily to build buzz or get awards consideration.
Could Netflix be poised to make a big exception?
The Los Gatos, Calif.-based streamer is in early talks with cinema tech provider Imax Corp. to bring its upcoming adaptation of “The Chronicles of Narnia” to its giant screens, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment. The highly anticipated movie is based on the popular C.S. Lewis novels and directed by “Barbie” co-writer and director Greta Gerwig.
Discussions between Netflix, Imax and Gerwig, who has been a driving force on the issue, are preliminary at this stage, the people said. A deal may not happen. If an agreement solidifies, it would be Imax’s first deal for a theatrical window for a Netflix feature film.
The talks represent a potentially delicate balancing act for Netflix.
Netflix wants to work with the best filmmakers in the business, and many of them, including “The Irishman” director Martin Scorsese, want their movies shown on the big screen. But Netflix’s priority is its streaming service, which has nearly 283 million subscribers globally and generates billions of dollars in annual subscription revenue. Whenever Netflix executives are asked about whether they’ll do more in theaters, the response is the same: They like their streaming-first model.
Netflix and Imax declined to comment.
The discussions were earlier reported by Bloomberg and Puck News’ Matthew Belloni.
Some analysts and industry observers have been critical of Netflix’s movie strategy over the years, arguing that its films have struggled to enter the cultural zeitgeist in the way its TV shows have. Some felt Netflix left money on the table by only showing “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Rian Johnson’s sequel to his popular murder mystery “Knives Out,” in just 700 theaters for a few days in 2022 before it became available for streaming.
Traditional movie studios put their movies in theaters for weeks and sometimes months before making them available for home viewing. When big studio movies are released early for digital consumption, it’s often as a $25 rental.
It also can be hard for a movie to break through the streamer’s large library of content. Netflix’s top movies of all time are action flick “Red Notice,” dark comedy “Don’t Look Up” and sci-fi movie “The Adam Project,” all movies released two or three years ago. Recent hits on the platform include Jeremy Saulnier’s “Rebel Ridge,” a relatively low-budget thriller. Netflix also does well with movies it licenses from other studios, including Universal Pictures.
“They’re trying to play catch-up with movies, and they’re 100 years behind,” said Michael Pachter, research analyst at Wedbush Securities. “And they’re never going to catch up.”
While Netflix has won a significant number of awards for its films, it has yet to win an Academy Award for best picture. It bought and restored the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood from the American Cinematheque in an effort to win over cinephiles and filmmakers. Netflix also owns the Bay Theater in Pacific Palisades, where it screens its own movies.
“Some of these films, in the context of that massive bandwidth of Netflix, you’re like a drop in the ocean,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “When a movie is in a movie theater, you’re not competing with unlimited hours of content, unlimited titles on a small screen you can scroll through.”
Domestic theatrical revenues are down significantly from pre-COVID-19 levels. But last year, movies like “Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and romantic comedy “Anyone but You” received a significant boost in theaters as audiences kept coming through word-of-mouth and the hype of social media. Particularly with “Barbie,” fans dressed in pink to see it in theaters, making it an event.
This year has seen a strong showing for family-friendly films, with the box office success of animated movies such as “Inside Out 2.”
“The Chronicles of Narnia” fits into that genre as an epic tale with Christian undertones about a magical world and the four siblings who discover and rule it as kings and queens. The last three Narnia films, released theatrically in 2005, 2008 and 2010 by Disney and 20th Century Fox, generated $537.7 million in the domestic U.S. and Canada market, according to non-inflation-adjusted data from Comscore.
“If you look at Narnia, the depth and breadth of the fantasy world that it inhabits — having that level of detail … having that imagery presented in Imax is huge,” Dergarabedian said. “For a movie that is expected to be a visual extravaganza, such as Narnia would present, Imax is a perfect home for that.”
If Netflix were to partner with Imax, it would put Gerwig’s cinematic vision on screens highly coveted by filmmakers and studios. Imax has roughly 2,000 screens globally, with screens typically about 65 feet wide and 85 feet tall. Its biggest screens stretch to more than 125 feet tall. Imax specializes in “event” movies, often in the action-adventure genre that benefits from huge screens.
Over time, Netflix has sought to build excitement for its shows and movies through social media, consumer products and its live programming. The streamer has hosted balls themed around its romantic series “Bridgerton,” helping sustain excitement in between seasons, and has hosted other fan events to support shows like “Outer Banks.”
Netflix executives have defended its movie strategy. Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos said in an earnings presentation earlier this month that the streamer’s top 10 films that launch on Netflix have more than 100 million views.
“It’s our desire to keep adding value to our consumers for their subscription dollar,” Sarandos said. “We believe that not making them wait for months to watch the movie that everyone’s talking about adds that value.”
“The Chronicles of Narnia” will be one of the major movies on Netflix’s slate after naming Dan Lin as its new film chief earlier this year. Lin took over the position from Scott Stuber, who left in January to start his own company. It was Stuber who had pushed Netflix executives for theatrical releases of major films. Lin, who produced films including “It” and “The Lego Movie,” is not an evangelist for the theatrical model.
Under Lin, Netflix restructured its movie department to be grouped under genres instead of by size of budget.
Nike is cutting about 1,400 jobs in its operations division, mostly from its technology department, the company said Thursday.
In a note to employees, Venkatesh Alagirisamy, the chief operating officer of Nike, said that management was nearly done reorganizing the business for its turnaround plan, and that the goal was to operate with “more speed, simplicity and precision.”
“This is not a new direction,” Mr. Alagirisamy told employees. “It is the next phase of the work already underway.”
Nike, the world’s largest sportswear company, is trying to recover after missteps led to a prolonged sales slump, in which the brand leaned into lifestyle products and away from performance shoes and apparel. Elliott Hill, the chief executive, has worked to realign the company around sports and speed up product development to create more breakthrough innovations.
In March, Nike told investors that it expected sales to fall this year, with growth in North America offset by poor performance in Asia, where the brand is struggling to rejuvenate sales in China. Executives said at the time that more volatility brought on by the war in the Middle East and rising oil prices might continue to affect its business.
The reorganization has involved cuts across many parts of the organization, including at its headquarters in Beaverton, Ore. Nike slashed some corporate staff last year and eliminated nearly 800 jobs at distribution centers in January.
“You never want to have to go through any sort of layoffs, but to re-center the company, we’re doing some of that,” Mr. Hill said in an interview earlier this year.
Mr. Alagirisamy told employees that Nike was reshaping its technology team and centering employees at its headquarters and a tech center in Bengaluru, India. The layoffs will affect workers across North America, Europe and Asia.
The cuts will also affect staffing in Nike’s factories for Air, the company’s proprietary cushioning system. Employees who work on the supply chain for raw materials will also experience changes as staff is integrated into footwear and apparel teams.
Nike’s Converse brand, which has struggled for years to revive sales, will move some of its engineering resources closer to the factories they support, the company said.
Mr. Alagirisamy said the moves were necessary to optimize Nike’s supply chain, deploy technology faster and bolster relationships with suppliers.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
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