Ted Sarandos has always had an uncanny grasp of titles and stars, conjuring them in his pre-internet days as a video store clerk and dropping them frequently during his 25-year run at Netflix.Even by those standards, however, the Co-CEO may have set a personal record on Thursday, machine-gunning out the names of no fewer than 37 series, films and events soon to stream Netflix. The spree during a 3-minute stretch of the company’s second-quarter earnings call coincided with the company disclosing viewership for thousands of series and movies in its semi-annual “data dump.”Unlike other companies’ calls, Netflix’s are livestreamed on YouTube. Questions submitted by analysts are read by Spencer Wang, call moderator and VP of finance, investor relations and corporate development.J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth wondered about the company recently having outsized hits like the third season of Squid Game. “How do you think about the business currently being ‘hit-boosted’ or ‘hit-driven’?” Anmuth asked, per Wang. “And how confident are you that licensed and original programming momentum can continue in 2026?”Before launching into his Iliad-worthy roll call, Sarandos addressed a few general trends. “We’re definitely riding this long-term trend of linear to streaming, and that has a natural adoption curve,” Sarandos said. While hits can accelerate that growth, he continued, “each one of them even in success can drive about 1% of total viewing. So you need a lot more than just a big hit every once in a while. … It’s not about the single hit. It’s about a steady drumbeat of shows and films – and, soon enough, games – that our members really love and continue to expect from us.”Sarandos also cited the company’s Emmy nominations this week, which recognized 44 individual shows. “That’s what quality at scale looks like,” he said. HBO and HBO Max, though they topped Netflix, did so with fewer nominees.Name-checking Squid Game, whose final season began streaming last month, Sarandos called out a new season of Wednesday and the final batch of Stranger Things episodes later this year. He also hyped “a strong slate of supporting titles,” among them Eric Bana murder mystery series Untamed and Leanne Morgan comedy series Leanne.Notable films, he said, include Happy Gilmore 2, Knives Out 3, Noah Baumbach’s Jay Kelly, Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, Kathryn Bigelow’s A House of Dynamite; and The Rip (starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon),“And it does not stop there. It does roll right into 2026,” Sarandos said, beginning the “steady drumbeat.”Next year, he said, films will include Apex with Charlize Theron; Enola Holmes 3 with Millie Bobby Brown; and Greta Gerwig’s Chronicles of Narnia adaptation.Series due in ’26, the exec went on, include new seasons of Bridgerton; One Piece; Avatar: The Last Airbender; The Gentlemen; The Four Seasons; Running Point; Beef; 3 Body Problem; Love is Blind; Outer Banks; Lupin; Berlin; and 100 Years of Solitude. New series include Man on Fire, an updated Little House on the Prairie; The Boroughs (from Stranger Things duo the Duffer Brothers); Japan’s The Human Vapor; India’s Operation Safed Sagar; and Korea’s Can This Love Be Translated?Sarandos ended by noting the recently announced reboot of Star Search; Roald Dahl-based reality competition Wonka’s Golden Ticket. And, last but not least, the ultimate TV juggernaut: the NFL, with Christmas Day games on tap this year and next.“We’re incredibly excited about the back half of this year, and confident it keeps rolling in 2026,” Sarandos said in conclusion.The exec’s recitation appeared to surprise even his longtime colleagues on the video call. Co-CEO Greg Peters, fielding a question moments later about Netflix’s upcoming partnership with TF1 in France, beamed a wide smile.“You would think with that long list of amazing titles that Ted just rattled off that we’d have enough to satisfy every person on the planet,” Peters said, as a chuckle from an off-camera colleague was heard. “But it turns out we actually consistently hear from our members that they want more.”
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