James Cameron hates how Netflix treats movie theaters, and he's 100% right

Of the five highest-grossing movies of all time, James Cameron has directed three: Avatar is in first place, Avatar: The Way of Water is in third, and Titanic is in fourth. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the upcoming Avatar: Fire & Ash joins them in the winner’s circle, whatever misgivings I have about the franchise. Clearly, Cameron knows how to make movies that pack people into theaters.

That’s more important than ever these days, as movie theaters still haven’t recovered from a post-pandemic slump. Streaming is also a problem; if you have a Netflix account, why bother going to the theater?

As it happens, James Cameron has some very pointed thoughts about that.

What James Cameron said

Leave it to Cameron to say it straight

Netflix makes a ton of movies, but very few end up in theaters; most go straight to streaming. Netflix will make exceptions for movies that are especially big or that might win awards; in that case, Netflix will release the movies on a limited number of screens for a limited amount of time, usually just long enough to meet the eligibility requirements for Oscar contention, and then pull them. It’s doing that right now with the third Knives Out movie, Wake Up Dead Man. You can see that movie in theaters if you’re in exactly the right place at exactly the right time, but Netflix doesn’t make it easy for you.

At the moment, Netflix is one of several companies vying to buy Warner Bros., a 100-year-old movie studio that deeply values the theatrical experience. Warner Bros. has had a fantastic year at the box office, even turning offbeat genre-bending films like One Battle After Another into buzzworthy events. If Netflix buys Warner Bros., they’ll probably funnel most of the studio’s movies straight to streaming. James Cameron thinks that would suck.

“Netflix would be a disaster, Cameron said on an episode of The Town With Matthew Belloni. “Sorry, [Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos], but geez. Sarandos has gone on the record saying theatrical films are dead. ‘Theatrical is dead. Quote, unquote.'”

What Sarandos actually said was that the idea of making movies to play in theaters is “an outdated concept,” but potato, potatoe. It’s obvious that Netflix does not care about theaters, and Cameron is 100% right to be annoyed by it.

Netflix’s approach to theatrical releases makes no sense

It’s bad for Netflix, bad for movie fans, bad for everyone

Credit: Netflix

On one level, I understand why Netflix doesn’t want to release its movies in theaters; Netflix’s whole thing is that it disrupted Hollywood by beaming movies directly into people’s homes. And it can still do that, but the company’s aversion to theaters makes less and less sense the longer it goes on.

Consider a couple of examples. In 2022, Netflix released Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery into a limited number of theaters for only one week. In just that small sliver of time, Glass Onion made $15 million, nearly half its budget. In June of 2025, Netflix released KPop Demon Hunters to streaming, and it became a smash hit. In August, they released it in theaters for a special two-day event, raking in around $20 million. Imagine how much more those movies could have made if they had normal wide releases. You’re leaving money on the table, Ted.

There’s also the matter of cultural cache, something that releasing a movie into theaters—where people can come together to enjoy it collectively — tends to create. Knives Out is one of the few Netflix movie franchises to actually leave a mark on pop culture, and it’s no coincidence that the first movie in that series had a wide release in theaters before Netflix secured the rights to release the sequels. If you have children in your life, they were probably obsessed with KPop Demon Hunters for weeks on end. Releasing that movie into theaters helped keep that hype going; it turned an already popular movie into an event. You can release a movie in theaters, get people talking about it, and then drive more customers to your streaming service, Ted. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.

James Cameron has ideas for how to make Netflix act right

Do whatever the director of The Terminator says

In their interview, Belloni suggests that, should Netflix buy Warner Bros., Sarandos might release more movies in theaters, but Cameron isn’t buying. “It’s sucker bait,” the director said. “’We’ll put the movie out for a week or 10 days. We’ll qualify for Oscar consideration.’ See, I think that’s fundamentally rotten to the core. A movie should be made as a movie for theatrical, and the Academy Awards mean nothing to me if they don’t mean theatrical. I think they’ve been co-opted, and I think it’s horrific.”

It doesn’t feel like Sarandos is going to change his tune on theaters unless he’s forced to, and Cameron has an idea for how to do that. You see, although Netflix hates releasing movies in theaters, it badly wants to win industry awards. It’s tried and failed to win the Best Picture Oscar with several movies over the years, including Roma, The Irishman, and Emilia Perez. If Netflix wants to be eligible for those awards, Cameron doesn’t think they should be allowed to just release them for the smallest amount of time possible on the fewest screens possible. “They should be allowed to compete if they put the movie out for a meaningful release in 2,000 theaters for a month,” he said.

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Had Netflix given movies like Roma or The Irishman wide releases in theaters, I honestly think they would have stood a much better chance of winning Best Picture. The people who wanted to see those movies in theaters could have done so, and the people who wanted to watch them on streaming could have done so. And I suspect that more people would have wanted to watch them on streaming thanks to the extra buzz drummed up by a theatrical release. It would have been a win-win-win situation, and it can be for future movies. All that’s stopping Netflix is Netflix.

Netflix is bending a little bit here and there. Knives Out 3 is playing in theaters for two weeks, up from one week for Knives Out 2. And Netflix will release Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Narnia movie on IMAX screens for two weeks. But these are teeny-tiny baby steps. Netflix, theaters, James Cameron, you, me, and everyone would all be better off if the studio broke into a run.