Netflix in talks to purchase Egyptian Theatre

CAIRO – 12 April 2019: Netflix is negotiating with American Cinematheque to acquire the historical Egyptian Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard.

If this happened the venerable Egyptian Theater will be the first movie theater owned by Netflix.


This deal which is expected to worth many tens of millions of dollars, will place Netflix in a better position inside Hollywood cinematic community, because Netflix by purchasing this theater will preserve one of Hollywood’s landmark movie theaters. Also non-profit Cinematheque will have a better financial position after this deal.

The deal won’t affect Netflix’s relationship with independent theaters that show its movies like Landmark and Ipic.

Netflix and Cinematheque view this deal as a partnership. Netflix will screen its movies for weekday nights, on the other hand Cinematheque runs screenings, lectures and occasional festivals on weekends.


Egyptian Theater was built by Sid Grauman in the early 1920s as a pharaoh-themed theater.

The historical Egyptian Theater hosted Hollywood’s very first movie premiere in 1922 which was a silent film entitled ‘’Robin Hood, directed by Allan Dwan and starred Douglas Fairbanks as Robin Hood, Wallace Beery as Richard the Lionhearted, Sam De Grasse as Prince John, Enid Bennett as Lady Marion and Alan Hale as Little John.
Established in 1981, the Cinematheque in 1998 completed a $12.8 million renovation and facelift to the theater.

Netflix Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos is at the same time a board member of American Cinematheque.

Originally founded in 1997, Netflix had a strategic 10-year vision in 2007: They wanted to become an “entertainment technological company.”

Netflix works on two parallel tracks; the first is buying or creating good content, and the second is making this content accessible for hundreds of millions of viewers around the world.

Netflix has almost 118 million subscribers, which translates into nearly half a billion viewers watching from 190 countries in 20 languages.

According to their figures, people watch Netflix for a total of 140 million hours every day.

This boom started five years ago when Netflix launched its first original production, House of Cards series.

The global content library of Netflix has content from over 100 different countries. This year, the company plan is to spend over $8 billion to make that library even bigger.