Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ recent meeting with RRR stars Ram Charan and Jr NTR in Hyderabad took the internet by storm, with fans speculating about a possible collaboration between the two actors and the streaming giant. “I’m such a fan,” revealed Sarandos about his experience of meeting the RRR stars during a selective media roundtable organised by Netflix in Hyderabad.
From meeting Ram Charan and Jr NTR at their respective homes to catching up with south superstars like Mahesh Babu, Allu Arjun, Prabhas, Rana Daggubati, Venkatesh, Naga Chaitanya, Dulquer Salmaan and SS Rajamouli, Sarandos made the most of his trip to India.
Talking about the same, Sarandos said, “It was a great opportunity to get to meet everybody and spend some time together. That’s always my favourite part of these trips. We swapped a lot of great stories about RRR because I was very surprised that I casually posted on social media about the movie because I loved watching it so much myself and then it got picked up in the press and all around the world. But to me it was a perfect example of what Netflix does best – takes the best and brightest in the country and amplifies it in a very global way. Now when people in the US saw RRR for the first time, especially my friends, they were like, ‘we haven’t seen anything like that.’ And I was like, ‘yeah, because you haven’t watched Indian cinema.’ The last time we were all (RRR team) together was winning the golden globes and nominations at the Oscars. That was kind of a golden moment.”
Apart from meeting the bigwigs of the South film industry, Sarandos attended the star-studded premiere of Zoya Akhtar’s The Archies, which marked the debuts of star kids like Suhana Khan, Agastya Nanda and Khushi Kapoor. So was this premiere one of his main agendas to visit India? He said, “It was just the timing. I’d been planning to come for a while. I, in fact, had multiple conflicts that week. I was in Los Angeles for the Academy Museum Gala 2023 and then I spoke at an investors annual conference in New York City. I skipped the premieres of Leave the World Behind and the final season of The Crown to be here.”
When asked about his thoughts on whether Netflix has finally cracked the Indian market, Sarandos said, “It’s so great to be back in India. For me, it’s the second time that I’m here. The thing that I love about coming to India every time is that it’s always growing and moving very fast. It’s a very high energy country. So every time I come what I admire the most is the kind of the spirit of what’s next.”
He continued, “Usually when I get here the first question is something along the lines which is asked- what’s different from the last time – and it’s a perfectly valid question because things are always different. The general health of the programming is very high right now. Last year, India was our fastest growing market in the world. And this year it remains one of our top fastest growing markets. This is about not just delivering the people’s favourite movies or series but setting an expectation that the next one will also be great. That’s what we have been up to and it’s coming together in ways we couldn’t have imagined a few years ago.”
Comments
0 comment