When Scott Stuber next walks into a room, he might think about having Netflix’s “ta-dum” as his intro track.
The upbeat snippet is familiar to millions around the world – one quarter of a billion subscribers at last count.
Netflix plays to the beat of its own drum, and Stuber who was named as chairman of Netflix Film in January 2023, helps set the tone.
Speaking at Variety’s Business Managers breakfast Wednesday morning (Nov. 8) in Los Angeles, Stuber gave guests a glimpse behind the drum pattern, of a business that’s in a constant battle for attention.
Everyone, from industry and fans, are caught up with “the metrics,” Stuber admits, noting that the company publishes it results “every week to not be opaque.”
Operating Netflix’s content schedule, and competing against the likes of Disney+, Max, Apple TV+ and the myriad of platforms, is comparable to his previous life in studio-land.
“I run it like I ran Universal [Pictures]. I have a P&L. I have an addressable audience of 250 million people, I have a budget on movie that is say unwritten, I have marketing component,” he says, and a team of people to complete the task.
Weekend Box Office, causes studio chiefs to lose sleep, and hair. The competitiveness is at another level, because, well “as an audience member you can leave that theatre very easily and go next door by pressing exit very quickly. If you exit a movie before a certain number (of minutes), I don’t get the ticket.”
Producers need to bring their a-game, every game.
“You have to be sharper, and be better, in order to make people want stay and watch it.” And with all the distractions in our lives, the content must be good enough to reel you back in.
“I do almost the same thing, slightly different but almost the same application as what I did when I ran Universal,” Stuber reckons.
Prior to joining Netflix in 2017, Scott founded and ran Bluegrass Films and served as Universal Studios’ Vice Chairman of Worldwide Production.
Since arriving at the streamer, he’s overseen the development, production and acquisition of the streamer’s slate of films, including Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Oscar winner All Quiet on the Western Front, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Adam Project, The Gray Man, Academy Award, and BAFTA-winning The Power of the Dog, and much more.