Streaming movie and TV series service Netflix appears to be ready for a fight with movie theaters. They already have multiple hit original series, but recently their first original movie—a sequel to Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—was announced with plans to debut the movie on Netflix with some IMAX-only screenings in theaters. The theaters did not appreciate this, with multiple big theater companies such as AMC, Regal, and Cinemark stating that they would not run the movie on their screens.

Instead of trying to work around this, Netflix has instead made their next move known. The company has signed Adam Sandler to an exclusive four-movie deal. What four movies these will be is not yet known, but Sandler will develop them through his Happy Madison Productions.

Whether you like Sandler’s movies or not, he’s a big box office draw for sure. So the fact that he’s signed a deal for four movies that will skip the box office part all together and go straight to streaming is a big deal.

Of the announcement, Sandler said:

He also joked about it on Twitter:

I tried to sign up for Netflix but this happened instead… http://t.co/xuzIxIfAEI #SandlerOnNetflix http://t.co/fguHcDSsuJ

— Adam Sandler (@AdamSandler) October 2, 2014

Netflix will be covering the budget usually needed for a Happy Madison production—around $80 million per movie on average—and Sandler will be both producing and starring in whatever four they decide to make.

[Source: THR]