Dan Lin has solely been within the new Netflix movie chief position for a little bit over every week, however he’s already making his mark.
Netflix has below gone a reorg below Lin, who took over on April 1 from Scott Stuber, and the present executives on the characteristic movie staff will now be divided primarily based on style, IndieWire has discovered. Every of the completely different movie staff leaders will cut up up just a few genres a chunk.
Right here’s the way it breaks down: Ori Marmur will get motion, fantasy, horror, and sci-fi films. Kira Goldberg will get thrillers, dramas, and household movies. Niija Kuykendall will get faith-based, younger grownup, and vacation films, and Jason Younger will get comedies and rom-coms. On account of the adjustments, a few dozen people from the movie staff are being laid off, which isn’t unusual when a brand new boss is available in.
How does this construction differ from what got here earlier than? Earlier than the cut up was primarily based on price range, not style. Execs Tendo Nagenda and Lisa Nishimura beforehand dealt with low-to-mid price range films, acquisitions, and documentaries, and every part else that was mid-to-high price range rolled as much as different executives and Stuber. Nagenda exited in September 2022, and Nishimura exited in March 2023.
That tended to be complicated throughout Hollywood. A number of of us had greenlight energy and oversight, making it onerous to know to whom to pitch tasks. After their exit, Netflix streamlined its movie staff with every part rolling as much as Marmur, Goldberg, and Kuykendall.
Within the previous mannequin, if Netflix had a handful of motion films (of which there are various), you’d have a number of groups tackling movies of varied budgets. Now there’s (hopefully) tighter alignment such that one particular person’s staff can craft a imaginative and prescient for its programming round a given style. Despite the fact that Lin has solely been within the job every week, he’s been speaking about this new manner of organizing issues with content material chief Bela Bajaria for a few month.
We’ll see simply what all this implies for the kinds of films Netflix places out below Lin (Netflix declined to remark). Bajaria has already stated the streamer can’t afford to outline itself narrowly. Lin, who has made his bread and butter with franchises like “The Lego Film,” “Sherlock Holmes,” “Godzilla vs. Kong,” and Netflix’s personal live-action “Avatar: The Final Airbender” sequence, could chase extra of these kinds of movies over status films that Stuber valued or among the most costly tentpoles like “Pink Discover” or “The Grey Man” that haven’t but spawned sequels.
THR first reported the information of the reorg.