Following the poor box office showing of Adam Sandler's new movie Pixels, Netflix's content chief Ted Sarandos has come out defending the deal the company made with the comedy start.
Netflix signed a four-movie deal with Sandler back in October of last year, but the production of the first film in the deal, 'The Ridiculous Six', has already stirred controversy with complaints about the depiction of Native Americans in the film. The trailer for the film was recently released and was not favourable received by the Internet public.
Given the shaky start of the Netflix/Sandler production, and given that Sandler's new film, Pixels, opened softly in US cinemas, some have started to question the Netflix deal.
But Sarandos says Netflix are far from discouraged, and pointed to Pixel's international box office numbers to suggest that Sandler's star hasn't waned.
“We did our deal with Adam Sandler because he is an enormous international movie star,” he told reporters. “We are as encouraged as ever.”
“Not to give you a defensive answer here, but I definitely don’t have to defend Adam Sandler,” says Sarandos. “Pixels did $24 million domestic opening; did $25 million international. A third of our subscribers are outside of the U.S., and we did our deal with Adam Sandler because he’s an enormous international global movie star. And that $50 million for Pixels is pretty respectable and I think will continue to grow. So we’re as encouraged as ever, and I think that that split of U.S./international box office is what really got us excited.”
As for the 'Ridiculous Six', Sarandos urged critics to watch the movie before making any further judgement.
“When people see ‘Ridiculous Six,’ the show will speak for itself,” said Sarandos. “When the movie comes out, people will see it’s fair.”
