Mr. Scorsese has made his recent films, including “The Wolf of Wall Street” and “Silence,” at Paramount. If he had made “The Irishman” under the auspices of a traditional Hollywood studio, it would have been business as usual, and the film would most likely be playing at a theater near you. But Paramount declined, because of the hefty budget for the decades-spanning film.

Netflix was the only company willing to take a risk on the project — a film that moves at a measured pace in its three and a half hours as it tells a tale of how organized crime was intertwined with the labor movement and government in the United States across the last century.

Netflix has little time for the old theatrical business model. It is devoted to keeping its subscribers happy, meaning that most of its movies make their debuts on the streaming service itself. Last year, Netflix tiptoed into the theaters, offering Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma,” which went on to win three Oscars, a 21-day exclusive release at independent and small-chain theaters before it started streaming. The film eventually played on roughly 1,100 screens around the world, roughly 250 of them in the United States.

“The Irishman” will move on to more theaters domestically and internationally after its initial expansion on Nov. 8, but its run will fall far short of a major release. Two films that came out last month, “Joker” and “The Addams Family,” have each played on more than 4,000 screens in the United States.

For Mr. Scorsese, Netflix tried to work out something more robust than the 21-day exclusive theatrical release it had arranged for “Roma.”

Netflix’s negotiating effort was led by Scott Stuber, the company’s head of original films, who was previously the vice chairman of worldwide production at Universal. Two major exhibitors, AMC and Cineplex, offered what they believed was a reasonable compromise with the 60-day plan, according to the two people familiar with the talks.