Welcome to Axis ProRata, a podcast that takes just 10 minutes to get you smarter on the collision of tech, business, and politics.

I'm Dan Pramak, on today's show, why the government shutdown could hurt Lyft, and Elizabeth Warren's capitalism test for Democrats.

But first, Netflix versus Hollywood.

If you went to a movie theater last year and were surprised by the lines for soda and popcorn,

you weren't alone.

2018 turned out to be a record year for box office, both in the U.S. and internationally,

after more than a decade of flat or decreasing performance.

Why it matters is this revenue revival suggests some problems with

this conventional wisdom that audience trends are toward at-home streaming services like Netflix

and away from the in-theater experience. And so the question now, particularly for Silicon Valley,

is how tech plans to make more disruptive inroads in 2019, and Netflix might have given us a preview

last week, when it reported that over 45 million people viewed Bird Box, a post-apocalyptic

thriller starring Sandra Bullock.

Now, that is a very, very big number, all be it a self-reported one, which would theoretically

translate into more than a $400 million

open were it to have been in a theater. So for Netflix, it wants people to view Birdbox

as the beginning of it doing to the movie industry what it did to the TV industry. In short,

dominate it. But to do so, Netflix also needs some buy-in from the very movie theaters it's trying to disintermediate,

particularly because it still needs theatrical releases for awards consideration, for things like the Oscars and the Golden Globes,

and it's that consideration that's often a prerequisite for big-name Hollywood talent to sign on to new productions.

So overall, consider Netflix's plans to still be a script in progress.

We'll go deeper in 15 seconds on all things Netflix with Axios Media reporter Sarah Fisher.

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