Ted Sarandos has a specific way of smiling that feels like a software update. It’s smooth, slightly cold, and tells you exactly nothing about what’s happening under the hood.

This week, the Netflix co-CEO took the stage to address the industry’s biggest elephant: the messy, multi-billion-dollar courtship of Warner Bros. Discovery’s crown jewels. But the real friction wasn’t the price tag or the antitrust red tape. It was James Cameron. The king of the box office—the man who won’t get out of bed for a movie that costs less than a mid-sized nation’s GDP—reportedly had "concerns."

Sarandos brushed them off with the practiced ease of a man who knows he holds the remote. He claimed Cameron was actually "supportive." It’s a bold bit of PR gymnastics. It’s also probably a lie.

Let’s be real. James Cameron treats the theatrical experience like a holy sacrament. He wants you in a seat, in the dark, staring at a screen the size of a suburban backyard. Netflix wants you in your pajamas, scrolling through a menu until you give up and watch a documentary about a serial killer while you’re halfway through a bag of Doritos. These two visions of "cinema" don't just clash. They want to kill each other.

The friction here isn't just about art. It’s about the brutal math of the streaming era. Warner Bros. is currently a yard sale with a "prestige" logo. David Zaslav has spent the last year stripping the copper pipes out of the walls to pay down debt, and Netflix is the guy standing on the sidewalk with a wad of cash and a U-Haul. The deal on the table would see Netflix licensing the kind of heavy-hitter IP—think Dune, The Batman, maybe even the keys to the HBO vault—that used to be the exclusive domain of the big screen.

Sarandos is trying to frame this as a win for everyone. He’s pitching a world where big-budget spectacles coexist with the "skip intro" button. But you don’t hire James Cameron to play second fiddle to an algorithm. Cameron’s "concerns" likely involve the fact that his movies are built for 48 frames per second and laser projection, not the compressed, bit-starved streams that Netflix pushes to your cracked iPad screen.

"We talked," Sarandos told the crowd, his voice dropping into that soothing, corporate register. "Jim understands where the industry is going. He’s been incredibly supportive of the reach we can provide."

Translation: We showed him a check with enough zeros to fund his next three underwater expeditions, and he stopped shouting for five minutes.

It’s a classic Hollywood pivot. In the old days, a studio head would promise a filmmaker "creative freedom." Now, they promise "reach." Reach is the consolation prize for losing the cultural conversation. Sure, 100 million people might "watch" your movie, but 60 million of them were doing laundry at the same time. The "reach" Sarandos is selling is a shallow ocean.

The specific trade-off here is the death of the event. When everything is available everywhere, nothing is special. If the Warner deal goes through, the wall between "prestige cinema" and "content" finally collapses. The same interface that suggests a low-budget dating show will now serve up the next Mad Max. For Sarandos, that’s a victory for the user experience. For anyone who gives a damn about the scale of storytelling, it’s a funeral.

Netflix is currently charging $22.99 for its premium tier. That’s more than a ticket to an IMAX screening of Avatar: The Way of Water in Manhattan. They’ve successfully convinced us that the convenience of never leaving the couch is worth more than the spectacle itself. Sarandos knows this. He’s betting that even a titan like Cameron can’t fight the gravity of the subscription model.

The CEO’s insistence that Cameron is "on board" feels like a preemptive strike. It’s meant to signal to the rest of the nervous directors in Burbank that the water is fine. Don’t mind the sharks. Don’t mind the fact that your lifework is being turned into a thumbnail. Just look at the data.

But data doesn't build legacies. It builds filler. Sarandos can claim all the support he wants, but the reality is simpler. Netflix isn't buying Warner Bros. content to celebrate it. They’re buying it to commodify it until the very idea of a "theatrical window" feels like a quaint relic of the 20th century, like rotary phones or physical media.

If James Cameron is truly "supportive" of a future where his epics are interrupted by "Are you still watching?" prompts, then the battle for the big screen is already over.

But you have to wonder: when the credits finally roll on the last movie theater, will Netflix even let us watch them, or will they just auto-play a trailer for a reality show about people who live in tiny houses?