“Doing business in Hollywood is very much built on trust and relationships,” Sarandos told Bloomberg. To that end, Sarandos has been schmoozing with execs like Lions Gate President Steve Beeks and DreamWorks CEO Jeff Katzenberg, and plans to spend more time—and money—in an effort to get better digital distribution rights for their new releases and overall libraries.

Netflix currently has access to a limited number of new releases from studios like Disney and Sony—but that’s largely through deals it cut with third-party services like Starz. Both Sarandos and Hastings said Netflix is willing “to write big checks” to the studios directly to get access to a wider variety of new releases. The upfront payments would hopefully convince the studios that Netflix is a “friend” as opposed to an enemy (a la Redbox), but also to help the entire movie ecosystem move toward digital distribution in a profitable way.