How do you reassure Netflix about their new cinema venture?          

          Do the work. Deliver on-time and within budget to inspire confidence for a positive long-term relationship

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Netflix dipped their toes into the cinema industry with their lease of the iconic Paris Theater. They invested in and completed a website redesign. But barely a year later, Netflix realised it needed to differentiate Paris’ brand positioning from other single-screen cinemas in New York. Less indie, more premium; the destination for prestige film screenings.

Netflix provided a single design for a reimagined desktop home screen and explained their concept. The only catch was their budget was extremely tight.

Paris Theater’s original website was actually the result of its first redesign after signing a lease with Netflix. A year later, Netflix realised it needed to differentiate Paris’ brand positioning from other indie cinemas in New York. Their new vision for Paris was a premium destination for prestige film screenings.

Tight budget means tight timeline. Together with my Director of Digital Delivery, we determined a 2 design sprint schedule (4 weeks) was sufficient to translate Netflix’s home screen concept to the rest of their website, in desktop and mobile. We were to present progress to Netflix and Paris Theater stakeholders every 2 weeks (2 meetings total). The reskinning of Paris Theater’s UI was admittedly straightforward.

However, our existing ‘Omni-Channel Components’ and features were designed with multi-site chains in mind, not for single-screen independent cinemas. It was also crucial that film programming and website content management remained in Paris Theater’s domain; a fully flexible CMS took priority over UX quick wins. These factors meant absolutely no new back-end development.

          So instead, we cleverly reused and bundled components that, although were never intended to be used as such, still achieved the outcome Paris Theater were wanting

I reviewed design progress every week with my project colleagues in the UK, and presented every 2 weeks to heavyweight Netflix and Paris Theater stakeholders: Brand Design Lead, Global Brand Design Manager, Head of Distribution, Digital Producer, Manager of Theatrical Programming. One could wonder why such important people were attending website reskinning meetings. Perhaps this level of care is how they treat all projects? Certainly it reflected how important the project was to them.

My take, however, is because Netflix were nervous: their budget was small and we were new vendors. Cinema itself is also a new venture for Netflix, who are pioneers of digital content streaming, and not physical film experiences.

          The success of this simple website redesign project was surely Netflix’s litmus test for the success of their cinema gamble

As a small UX/UI Design team serving 20+ B2B products, anyone who contributes to a project pitches in to maintain, update, and improve the respective Figma library file. 2 designers and I (out of a team of 6) were the main authors of our digital “Omni-Channel Components” library. Thanks to our diligent upkeep, it was incredibly easy to adjust the Figma components to Paris Theater’s styling.


Each stakeholder meeting was productive: Netflix had minimal suggestions, and Paris Theater were confident they could maintain the content management system. We delivered on our promise and launched the redesigned website on-time and within budget.

Sometimes the best way to impress a client is to be insignificant — don’t cause stress, don’t makes waves.

          To reassure a new client of your trustworthiness and ability to deliver, put your head down and do the work they’ve asked for, exactly as they’ve asked for

I have no doubts this project directly resulted in another collaboration a year later: the kiosk and web ticketing of Netflix’s newly acquired Egyptian Theatre.

View the refreshed Paris Theater website︎︎︎