Netflix accepts the truth about theaters

And Colin and Pete's big fat ferry mess

Oct 31, 2025

Back in April, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos sat on stage at the Time 100 Summit and told a packed house that movie theaters are “an outdated concept” and that for “most people” the communal experience of going to the movies is “an outmoded idea.”

I get why he’d say that. He runs a streaming company. But let’s look at what the company is actually doing: In August, Netflix released KPop Demon Hunters in theaters for one weekend, where it did $20 million dollars. That was so successful, the movie has returned to AMC Theaters this Halloween weekend, which by the way signaled the end of AMC and Netflix’s bitter feud where they refused to work together.

Elsewhere in October, Netflix gave Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein a limited release on about 400 screens. And did you know that Netflix is putting Greta Gerwig’s first Chronicles of Narnia movie on 1,000 IMAX screens for an exclusive two-week run next Thanksgiving?

But most importantly Netflix announced last week that the Stranger Things season finale will be shown in 350 movie theaters at 8 pm ET on New Years Eve, exactly when it drops on Netflix. With more screenings running through New Years Day. And Variety reports that Netflix is also planning a robust rollout including theaters for The Adventures of Cliff Booth next summer, the sequel to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

This doesn’t sound like a company that hates movie theaters and thinks they’re outdated. In fact, it sounds like a company that recognizes the power of communal experiences and the legitimacy theatrical releases can bring a project. And yes, an unnamed movie theater executive told VAriety that Netflix won’t be “announcing a theatrical slate.” But it will be using theaters as a marketing and community building tool when it has “something special.” It seems Netflix is finally coming around to the power of movie theaters.

Colin Jost and Pete Davidson’s Staten Island ferry situation is a mess

Hey remember back in 2022 when SNL vets and Staten Island natives Colin Jost and Pete Davidson spent $280,000 on a decommissioned Staten Island ferry? Jost later admitted it was “absolutely the dumbest and least thought-through purchase I’ve ever made in my life” and Davidson said it had become “a lifelong problem for me and Colin.”

But they did have a plan for it. In March of last of year Curbed reported that they were going to turn the ferry into a nightlife destination with 6 bars, 2 restaurants, a concert venue and a hotel. Unfortunately, the ferry plan has gone awry.

As the NY Times reported last week that Titanic 2, the hilarious name they gave the boat’s parent company, is currently being sued “for nonpayment by the law firm hired to handle contracts for dockage and towing.”

The boat is apparently just sitting at a dock on Staten Island’s northside. It’s unable to move via its own power - its engine stopped working before they bought it and the NY Times says, the boat is bobbing “in the harbor like an immense bathtub toy, racking up docking fees.”

And those fees are a lot. The Times estimates the total costs at $600,000+ over the last few years. Which is more than twice what they paid for it. And that doesn’t even include the insurance, towing, and legal fees. According to the lawsuit, the law firm charges the Titanic 2 company $27,335 a month.

The boat also has a ton of asbestos on board - which will have to be removed before it becomes a nightlife hub and there will be several regulatory and logistical hurdles when they look for a permanent place to dock it in NYC.

So can Colin and Pete just sell it for scrap? The Times says that isn’t a great option because the scrap market is weak right now and they might end up losing tens of thousands more just to scrap it. I guess the lesson here is don’t impulse buy a $280,000 dollar 60 year old ferry.

The Pentagon called out Netflix’s new nuclear war movie

In case you haven’t heard of it, Netflix released Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite last Friday. This nuclear war thriller tells the story of an impending attack on the US and how the different levels of government and the military would deal with that. And well the Pentagon isn’t too happy about that.

In fact it circulated an internal memo disputing the movie’s accuracy — which Bloomberg managed to get its hands on. You see In the movie, the fictional secretary of defense laments that the US’s missile interception program is only effective 60% of the time, but the Pentagon says America’s interception technology has “displayed a 100% accuracy rate in testing for more than a decade.”

The memo addresses that the movie of course takes creative license for the sake of drama, but current testing of the military’s defense systems tells “a vastly different story.”

The movie’s writer Noah Oppenheim, who previously worked as the president of NBC News, went on MSNBC Sunday and defended the facts of the movie. He said he “respectfully disagrees” with the Pentagon’s statement and, “I did talk to many missile defense experts who were all on the record. We just asked them a ton of questions. How does it work? What are the processes? What are the procedures?”

“So what you see on screen is hopefully a fairly accurate portrait of the reality that exists. Unfortunately, our missile defense system is highly imperfect. If the Pentagon wants to have a conversation about improving it or what the next step might be in keeping all of us safer, that’s the conversation we want to have. But what we show in the movie is accurate.”

Star Wars fans are fighting desperately for Disney to reconsider this canceled movie

And stuff like this has worked in the past. So in case you missed it, last week Adam Driver revealed that he and Steven Soderbergh had written a Star Wars sequel film about the continuing adventures of Kylo Ren, called The Hunt for Ben Solo. Driver said it was one of the coolest scripts he’d ever been a part of and that Lucasfilm were entirely on board. But then Bob Iger and Disney scrapped the project, because they couldn’t see how Ben Solo was still alive.

This news angered a lot of Star Wars fans because one, Kylo Ren is a fan favorite character and two, Disney had never superseded a Lucasfilm decision like this in the past.

So some entrepreneurial Ben Solo heads are taking matters into their own hands. Last Thursday, a group of fans paid for a plane to fly over Walt Disney Studios in Burbank with a banner that read “Save The Hunt for Ben Solo.” And then a billboard popped up at 1500 Broadway in New York City with the message “For Adam. No one’s ever really gone. Hope lives. Ben is alive! #THBS.”

The billboard was purchased by B.D. Neagle, who spoke to Collider about the movement, “I’m just a fan who thought Ben’s story wasn’t finished … The intent was to show Disney this is what fans actually want.”

We’ve seen fan campaigns like this in the past — and sometimes they’ve worked. Snyderverse fans were instrumental in convincing Warner Brothers to fund Zack Snyder’s version of Justice League, for example. Will Disney reverse its decision on Ben Solo? Stay tuned.

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