Sarandos' steady rise in Hollywood

Warner acquisition is a moment of triumph for a film buff who has defied convention.

- WENDY LEE AND MEG JAMES

MOVIE BUFF Ted Sarandos, 61, spent his first three years at Netflix working out of his Los Angeles bedroom.

Hollywood moguls once dismissed the outsize ambitions of Netflix's executives.

"Is the Albanian army going to take over the world?" former Time Warner Chairman Jeff Bewkes asked a reporter 15 years ago. “I don't think so.”

Think again. On Friday, Netflix co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos pulled off an audacious $82-billion deal to buy much of Bewkes’ old haunts: the Warner Bros. film and TV studios in Burbank, and HBO and the HBO Max streaming service in Culver City.

"This is a rare opportunity," Sarandos said in an investor call. “It’s going to help us achieve our mission to entertain the world and to bring people together through great stories. We've built a great business, and to do that, we've had to be bold and continue to evolve.”

If the takeover is approved — it could face a raft of legal and regulatory challenges — Netflix would gain ownership of such classics as “Casablanca” and “Goonies” and popular characters including “Batman,” “Scooby-Doo,” “Dirty Harry” and “Harry Potter.”

The acquisition represents a moment of triumph for the brash Sarandos, who has gone from Hollywood gatecrasher to the ultimate power broker.

“There seems to be no ceiling of opportunity for Ted Sarandos,” said Tom Nunan, a former studio and network executive. “He’s the king of Hollywood.”

Netflix’s victory in the auction for Warner Bros. stunned many in Hollywood who figured that Paramount — whose bid was backed by the one of the world’s wealthiest men, Larry Ellison — had a lock onthe prized Warner assets.Even Netflix’s brass downplayed their merger ambitions as recently as two months ago. Co-Chief Executive Greg Peters shrugged off any interest at a Bloomberg conference, saying: “We come from a deep heritage of builders rather than buyers.”