Locally authentic contents make global impact: Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos at WAVES 2025

Q. How does it feel to be at WAVES?

A. It's an amazing pleasure to be here. WAVES is such an incredible undertaking. So grateful to the government for putting this together and bringing it to life and for inviting Netflix to be part of it. We've been operating in India now for nine years. We took a big swing seven years ago with Sacred Games. I knew when I came to India that it would be a very important part of our journey because what we found with Sacred Games is that great stories could transcend borders, language, culture and really talk to the world. Sacred Games proved that. I'm just endlessly thrilled to work with the creative community in India.

Ted Sarandos (L) in conversation with Saif Ali Khan (R) at WAVES 2025, in Mumbai, on May 3, 2025. Photo courtesy: PIB

Q. Netflix has created a revolution in terms of watching films and content. What is the world watching right now and where do you think storytelling headed over the next 20 years?

A. Well, what's great is the world is watching their favourite shows and films on Netflix across the globe and it's very rarely the same thing. Every once in a while, something will really catch fire where people not only want to watch it everywhere in the world, but they want to talk about it. Something like Adolescence right now from the UK is an example of that where one taps into a story that feels very local and relevant anywhere in the world. We get the pleasure of doing that with stories that could be either very British like Adolescence or Heeramandi which would be obviously quite Indian and still travel the entire world and I think that has been the kind of the new dynamics.

Twenty years is a long time to predict for. I wouldn't have been able to predict when we started in India seven years ago. In many ways, bigger and different for sure than I would have ever expected. But I think the impact of streaming is really about meeting the audience where they are. If one is in the business of bringing entertainment to people, the first thought should be how to please the audience and not spending too much time on debating about business models and distribution systems because the viewers, I promise, are not talking about that at all.

I think the other thing that's been really hard to predict but incredibly impactful is our production in local storytelling. After Covid when things got back to normal, we've invested in India in a way that has created $2 billion of economic impact from our productions. So 20,000 cast and crew jobs (were created) from our productions in India. Last year, people watched about 3 billion hours of Indian content on Netflix around the world! There was a title from India in the global top 10 every week in 2024.

Q. What is your message for Indian creators who aim for their content to be taken globally?

A. The most interesting thing is trying to engineer something to be global is making it for nobody. The most locally authentic works have proved to be the most global. Nothing will work outside India if it isn't loved in its country of origin. I would tell the creators to refrain from watering it down, amalgamate and reverse engineer into what a movie is supposed to look like for the world because people won't recognise that created world. The audience will recognise the world that was quite local to them.

Q. What kind of stories draw you in?

A. I've a job of a lifetime because I get access to all these stories and I watch them as they're being made (laughs). So, I'm usually watching things that are six months to a year ahead of everybody else. I remember watching the first episode of Adolescence at the time and I remember the pitch for that show which sounded like a very bleak story and it is but it's so beautifully told, acted and written. Every episode is shot in one take and it's so technically difficult to do it. What I loved was it wasn't that they did something that was just hard to show off and it was gimmick. One didn't even realise while watching it that the episodes were one take but could feel the difference while viewing it. The gratifying thing is to get to take a chance on people, new stories and new storytellers.

Ted Sarandos (C) and Saif Ali Khan (R) at WAVES 2025, in Mumbai, on May 3, 2025. Photo courtesy: PIB

Q. What kind of contents are in the pipeline for 2025?

A. We have an upcoming show called Ba***ds of Bollywood which is really fun and I'm going to leave the audience to try to figure out the title completely, but it is so fun. We have a really great romantic comedy called The Royals which my wife and I watched together. Apart from these, we have the finales of Squid Game, Stranger Things and a brand new season of Wednesday. For movies, Happy Gilmore 2, Frankenstein are some of the upcoming films. A lot of fun movies and TV shows are coming up.