“That budget relative to a film is pretty modest,” says Sarandos, “and when you see it on screen, it’s not lacking for anything. When we think about budgets, why wouldn’t you do $20 million an hour episodes? That would be much closer to a typical film.”

No doubt Netflix soon will spend that amount, so long as they think they can recoup it. Which leads to the question of what Netflix considers a hit. They don’t publish ratings, so when Netflix says something is a smash, who’s to say it’s not just hot air?

Ratings, Sarandos says, do matter: “But it isn’t measured in a small time frame. The audience may not show up the first weekend, but that’s OK, because the people will come to it over time.”