Even though Ted Sarandos had long announced that a major reorganization was coming at Netflix, Bela Bajaria didn’t expect the ax to come for his role. A few days ago, the streaming giant’s chief content officer was in Cannes to receive an honor as the MIPCOM market was in full swing, before unveiling a major World Cup media rights deal a day later. While lower management were informed about the pink slips, sources say The Hollywood ReporterBajaria did not know she was going to be laid off until at least Wednesday and had personally informed staff of the company’s layoffs.
Although speculation focused on Bajaria’s role — when times are tough, the top programming exec is always in the hot seat — jaws dropped within Netflix when the double ouster and arrival of former Fox exec Peter Rice was announced internally.
In hindsight, much could be said about the smoke signals Sarandos was sending to the city. The Netflix honcho had met with HBO chief Casey Bloys several times this year, including in a very public meeting at Superba, the spacious Sunset restaurant near Netflix’s offices that also serves as the streamer’s unofficial commissioner. “He did it so people could see it,” says a source. “That put Bela on notice.”
Still, the Bajaria/Rice exchange was disconcerting for Netflix employees (“it’s been bumpy,” said one), many of whom have already been shaken by the streaming giant’s stock slide. Netflix strongly encourages its employees to take part of their pay in stock, but with shares down more than 45% from last year, employees who have done so are feeling the pain.
But it also suggests a major strategic change for the company, even if this new project remains obscure for the moment. Sarandos and Peters are expected to expand on their thinking Tuesday afternoon when they brief Wall Street analysts on Netflix’s quarterly earnings update. Sarandos told staff in an email Thursday that he will hold a company-wide town hall on Oct. 21 to delve into details: “I want everyone to know how we are thinking about strategy and our execution amid this week’s changes, and to have an opportunity to ask questions,” he wrote.
But the job market for Hollywood executives is clearly increasingly tight. “It’s a game of musical chairs and the music has stopped,” says an executive who works at Netflix.
With Bajaria’s ouster done and dusted, the industry’s eyes are now on film chief Dan Lin, who held an urgent meeting with the company’s film crew Thursday evening to review the shake-up. In this week’s layoffs, Lin’s No. 2, vice president of motion picture Doug Belgrade, was swept aside, among other motion picture executives. Belgrade was known as the director of the company’s leaders. And his diaper had indeed been removed.
Lin joined the company in 2024, hired by Bajaria into his own production company, where he amassed a handful of billion-dollar hits. The executive was hired to rein in filmmaker spending and streamline Netflix’s notoriously cumbersome film operations. It wasn’t uncommon for a project to be pitched to two different Netflix film groups with different results. Lin successfully reorganized, sorting his group by genre (thrillers, sci-fi, romantic comedy, etc.) rather than by potential budgets.
Under Lin, the division produced films that proved popular with subscribers, including Remarkably Brilliant Creatures, People we meet on vacation And Summitbut, like the rest of Netflix’s slate of late, hasn’t been able to hold the attention of an increasingly distracted audience. (To be fair, it’s hard to compete with an entity like YouTube, a platform that commands attention at any time of day and for any type of content.) Meanwhile, filmmakers are increasingly foregoing higher salaries for the allure of a theatrical release, as was the case this year at Sundance with Olivia Wilde. The invitation.
Even though the layoffs at Netflix are still recent, they may not have been changed yet. An agency source says THR that they believe Rice will be fully empowered to hire new people and restructure Netflix’s content operations once he officially joins Netflix.
Whether Lin stays at Netflix is an open question. Before being ousted from Warner Bros. following the studio’s merger with Paramount, former Warner film co-head Pam Abdy was also spotted having lunch with Sarandos, while fellow former film chief Mike De Luca is known to have a relationship with the CEO. It’s unclear if there could be a deal for the duo to land at the streaming giant as the company gears up for some big theatrical releases ahead.
Perhaps the most shocking thing about Rice’s move to Netflix is that, as one entertainment veteran notes, he’s a Hollywood guy, not a Netflix guy. While Netflix’s executive ranks are filled with entertainment veterans, the top of the org chart has long been dominated by internally developed people.
Sarandos and former Netflix and Paramount executive Cindy Holland both worked at the company when it was exclusively in the DVD-by-mail business, and moved into original content after moving into streaming. Bajaria was a senior executive at NBCUniversal before joining Netflix as a vice president, but she spent years at the company before being elevated. Rice is the first true outsider to rise to the top of the organizational chart with a mandate to make things happen.
Although some content managers were laid off this week, the reductions were primarily focused on product, technology, legal and human resources. Netflix has long used its internal “keeper test” to determine whether changes need to be made, with founder Reed Hastings likening the company to a championship sports team that is quick to make changes if it sees an opportunity to recruit a star.
By reading between the lines, one can get an idea of what Sarandos and Peters are thinking.
Rice will surely want to make his own adjustments once he gets started, and if the content strategy is drastically changed, the staff will change as well. Many of the people he worked with at Fox and Disney have moved on to bigger, better roles (see Dana Walden and Ravi Ahuja, among others), but there may be talented executives a rung or two lower that he could try to recruit.
One of Bajaria’s biggest successes was the globalization of Netflix content, allowing teams around the world to develop originals that they could stream anywhere. The result was legitimate successes like Squid game And Adolescenceand yet Netflix still lags behind traditional studios when it comes to franchises and valuable intellectual property. After all, that was one of the driving forces behind his pursuit of Warner Bros.
Rice may be about to change that strategy.
“I know this is a big change in a year that has already had its share,” Sarandos wrote in his memo to staff. “But I also see an opportunity to take our roster to the next level, particularly at UCAN where we have an outsized impact by creating big, buzzy hits that our members love and spark conversations around the world.”
In other words, Netflix may be about to recalibrate itself once again in the US market, focusing on the big, bustling and, yes, franchise-worthy ones. (Netflix, which also saw its PR operation take a big hit with the firing of several executives, declined to comment for this story.)
Lightshed Partners analyst Rich Greenfield said Friday morning Scream box that he believes Rice was recruited for his history of risk-taking at Fox and Disney: “I think that’s why he was brought to Netflix, is to increase the level of risk that they take and to really try to find hits to help them accelerate their engagement growth.”
The longtime voice of Wall Street added: “I suspect you’ll see some really big changes at Netflix over the next couple of years. »
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