Netflix Will Report Box Office for First Time, Starting With 'La Bola Negra'

By Marcus Bennett

Netflix will report theatrical box office figures for the first time in its history, and it is starting with "La Bola Negra," the Spanish war and LGBTQ epic that won over crowds at Cannes and TIFF. The film opens Friday on just four screens in Los Angeles and New York, including Netflix's own Paris Theater and two major AMC locations in Los Angeles — a chain that historically refused to play Netflix films.

The numbers will set a record for Netflix whatever they are, but only because the streamer has never publicly reported what any of its previous theatrical awards plays earned. Not once. Every other studio reports; Netflix has not, and the silence created the perception, fair or not, that the company did not care about the theatrical experience the way its rivals did.

What changes with 'La Bola Negra'?

The film gets the longest theatrical exclusive window Netflix has ever granted: 47 days before it drops on streaming. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos, speaking at the Screentime conference, said Netflix released 30 movies into theaters last year, each with a bespoke limited release strategy, and that "La Bola Negra" is essentially no different.

"We're looking at this model and saying, how do we serve movie lovers who may want to see this movie in a theater, and how do we not harm value to Netflix, and how do we position the film best in the world," Sarandos said. He added that art house films like "La Bola Negra" and "Train Dreams" require different handling from four-quadrant titles like Greta Gerwig's "Narnia: The Magician's Nephew" or Netflix's animated "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

The bet is that a strong per-screen average fuels a 47-day word-of-mouth campaign, with a platform rollout designed so the theatrical run does not cannibalize the film when it reaches subscribers.

Why now, and why this film?

"La Bola Negra" has no stars, is not in English, and is not based on existing IP. That makes it an unlikely pioneer. But the slate behind it explains the choice. David Fincher's "The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth," a Brad Pitt-starring sequel, arrives later this year, and Gerwig's "Narnia: The Magician's Nephew" follows early next year. Both, along with Danny Boyle's "Ink" and Peter Berg's "Mosquito Bowl," will carry traditional box office reporting.

AMC, with roughly 200-300 IMAX locations, has already agreed to screen "Cliff Booth" over Thanksgiving. "Narnia" will open wider than IMAX alone. In that light, "La Bola Negra" functions as the test balloon: a low-risk rehearsal for how Netflix will report data and hone the process before the tentpoles arrive.

Sarandos noted that if a movie takes a hit on Netflix itself by going theatrical, it should be because it has big upside at the box office.

The business logic behind the pivot

Netflix's messaging began shifting while it pursued Warner Bros. Discovery's film assets, before Paramount swooped in with a better deal for the whole entity. Suddenly Sarandos and co-CEO Greg Peters talked about loving theaters and floated 45-day windows.

Several pressures converge here:

• Theatrical attracts filmmakers Netflix has struggled to secure, with Gerwig at the top of the list, and star talent needs box office, not streaming figures, to command bigger paydays.
• The Sony licensing deal has shown that films performing best in theaters generally perform best on Netflix, though Sarandos argued theatrical films do not necessarily outperform all Netflix originals.
• The window for moving films quickly from theaters to streaming may be closing as other studios adopt new PVOD and SVOD windowing standards.
• Subscriber growth in the U.S. is plateauing; Netflix no longer regularly reports total subscribers and calls revenue its main metric. On Wednesday it laid off about 1,000 workers, one of the largest staffing cuts in its history.

What does this change for theaters?

Plenty, potentially. IndieWire understands Netflix has had to agree to terms more favorable to exhibitors than the even 50-50 ticket split usually reserved for major studios, likely as the price of securing the exclusive window. Netflix had no comment.

Internally, the company has not aggressively hired theatrical veterans as it scales up. Distribution chief Spencer Klein knows box office reporting from stints at Fox and The Weinstein Company, and Netflix recently enlisted Katie Martin Kelly, a veteran of Warner Bros. and Paramount, for its communications team.

Marketing spend remains the open question. Theatrical releases demand tens of millions in trailers and promotion, and Amazon and Apple learned that if box office merely covers marketing costs, the theatrical run has effectively paid for itself as a free campaign for the streaming debut — films with a theatrical push tend to perform better on streaming later.

Netflix will insist this is not a wholesale strategy shift; it still produces dozens of streaming-only films. But it is a shift for the industry, and if a few Netflix successes build a more robust theatrical marketplace, the whole business benefits.