Some semblance of reality tells me I can't afford you.
Looking at only one metric every day. What metric would that be? Batman, Big Bang Theory, Friends, Harry Potter, the entire CNN or TNT Sports.
Um, probably Harry Potter.
Sanjay Leela Bhansali or Martin Scorsese, who went more over budget?
No comment. I'm amazed at both how great they are and sometimes how horrible the pitches are. And I've tried very politely to say, 'Please, can I—' I don't feel so bad for me because I'm happy to hear the pitch. I feel really bad for my wife and the guests who are sitting there.
Is there that one lesson that Bollywood has taught you about storytelling?
That the best storytelling is timeless.
Okay, that's Bollywood. What stage in the entire Sacred Games process did you get most excited?
So, I have this—my negative in my role is I get to see the cuts early. So, I'm usually never watching what you're watching. I'm watching something you're going to be watching 6 months from now, a year from now. And seeing the film sometimes—the show sometimes I watch the first couple of episodes without the VFX in. And sometimes you can see very clear what's going to be there. Sometimes it's like, 'What am I looking at?' And the story itself was so engrossing that I was not distracted by the lack of the VFX in the earliest cuts and I couldn't wait to see it with the VFX in it.
Okay. Okay, Ted, if for whatever reason Netflix no longer is working out for you, right? You have the ability to choose to be the editor of any news organization in the world.
I mean, some semblance of reality tells me I can't afford you. But which news organization would you choose and why?
That's a really great question. I think that news has been so just kind of spread out—where you get the news from, where I get the news from, is unlikely to be the same anymore. So you mentioned Walter Cronkite. I had said somewhere, I don't know if maybe that's why you were referring to that. I wonder sometimes if when you had one source of truth, even if it was wrong sometimes, if that was better. But I don't think—I think those days are—that's nostalgia for something that doesn't exist anymore.
So, I look back now and I would be such a lousy news editor today. I don't think I would pick any of them.
I would be a professional consumer.
Okay. All right. If you were forced to run Netflix looking at only one metric every day, what metric would that be?
It's a wonky word, but it's love score. We have an ability to kind of measure how much people really are loving what they're watching, and it doesn't have anything to do with how big it is or how much it cost. Just did people love it? And I can't tell you how we do that, but it's part of the secret sauce. But that's the one metric I look at every day.
And they don't volunteer that information. You just calculate based on the data that they love it. Okay. All right. The last time you and Reed Hastings disagreed.
Well, Reed's been—he's moved on from Netflix a while ago. So, now I'm the co-CEO with Greg.
So, doing co-CEO is really exotic. Doing it with two different co-CEOs is really exotic.
But one thing I would tell you that is consistent—we decided early on that we would disagree violently with each other on things we really care about, and we would make sure that we didn't pull punches with each other ever.
You and Reed or you and Greg?
It's me and Greg today, and I think it started with me and Greg. And then we would disagree in front of our team or the people who work directly for us very openly. And then we would not disagree very much in front of everybody else. Because it's very difficult to lead if the two leaders are on two different pages. So no, I'm not going to—I know because people—I'm always fascinated because people always want to know—mostly when you're asked about your wife or your partner, your husband, people ask, 'Oh, how did you meet?' But imagine if they said, 'Tell me what you fight about.'
Because we both care deeply about the success of the business. And we have what I would argue very complementary skill sets. So if we have intuition about something, we're trying something new and if it's deeply ingrained in the tech side of the business and I disagree, I'll often just yield that decision to Greg and he'll do the same for me on the entertainment side of the business.
And that has served us very well. Now even that said we agree about 95% of the time, and so we've committed to each other if we ever don't agree, we'll duke it out.
Yeah. It's amazing, two co-CEOs. It's unheard of but you guys have made it happen so that's good on you.
Another thing that I find a little interesting about you and your industry and specifically you—you got friends across the board in the entire entertainment ecosystem. How do you manage that because they don't want to go behind the person's back who's in the middle of their relationship. How does all that play out? I find this unique in the entertainment industry. Everybody's friends with everybody. Any advice to us on how to kind of—
Well what I do is I make sure that my friends who are in the business who are also pitching projects to Netflix or working for Netflix, I tell them—I'm very honest with them that it'd be very bad for them to go around to me. And I said, 'The worst thing you want is for me to go to Monica and say, Make this,' does something that she has deemed not good for the company or good for the business. I have to trust them to do that. We operate at such amazing scale. That's the only way it works if our decision makers are really fully empowered.
And sometimes when someone comes to me and says, 'I have really exhausted all means and I talked to four layers of people before I'm doing this and I'm coming to you because I'm deeply passionate about this and I can't get it done. Would you look into it?' And I'd say, 'It might come with a price tag. You understand that?' And they say, 'We do.' And I said, 'If in that case, I might poke my head into something. I may ask about, can we get this done? Have you thought of this? Have you thought of that?' But at most, it's very rare. And it probably makes for much better friends if you don't.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, the last time you and my friend Monica Shergill have disagreed. What time is it?
Again, very—I very rarely because Monica knows so much more about this market than I do. Why would I possibly disagree with her?
Okay, superb. The one series that is on another platform that you wish was on yours.
The Studio, because I was in it.
Now if I tell people to watch my episode, I have to tell them to watch Apple, so.
But it was hilarious. We loved it. My wife and I really enjoyed it and your role in it was something outstanding actually. It was fun.
The Warner Brothers—okay, so utopian world, Warner Brothers Discovery deal didn't happen for you. We're in September now and Paramount also hasn't happened, right? So they are now sitting on a ticking fuse. And they are trying to figure out how to pay that ticking fuse. So you have the opportunity to buy any of the following IPs from Warner Brothers Discovery for a reasonable price. Let's assume you like the price. Batman, Big Bang Theory, Friends, Harry Potter, the entire CNN or TNT Sports. You pick anyone.
They're all great IP. That's why they were such an interesting project. Probably Harry Potter.
And what—just your thought process—is it because you can keep monetizing it, because you love it as an entertaining platform?
Yeah, I don't think—if you think about in history, 10 years is not a long time compared to 100 years that they've been doing this business. And I think we've created some lasting IP—Squid Game, Stranger Things certainly. But if you think back, what is a franchise that has really stood the test of time, and you look back in history, it's pretty rare.
I mean, you probably got 20 really that you can point to that are legitimate and Harry Potter is certainly one of them. That's why.
Okay. Sanjay Leela Bhansali or Martin Scorsese, who went more over budget?
