What Netflix's Exec Purge Means for Its Movies and TV

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executive shake-up I assumed he was talking about Dan Lin the head of the film group he'd been rumored to be on the chopping block nope this source said think bigger a few hours later I broke the news in my puck newsletter that Bella Bajaria the Netflix chief content officer since 2023 and a key TV executive at the company since 2016 also a guest on the show she was fired by co-CEO Ted Sarandos and replaced with Peter Rice a long-time Fox and then Disney executive the move surprised a bunch of people in town Bella's generally well liked and she succeeded in her mandate to broaden out the Netflix programming with everything from more local language global hits to the fire hose of true crime documentaries but we also know Netflix is in a tough spot right now engagement on the platform that's the Netflix word for viewership it was up only two percent in the first half of 2026 despite all those new YouTube creators and video podcasts Sarandos said last month it's quote not where we want it to be Netflix hasn't had as many buzzy water cooler shows or movies this year and this is the most important fact the stock price is down about 40 percent year over year the company just laid off about a thousand employees and its failed bid for Warner Brothers has spooked investors into thinking Netflix might be just like the other media companies looking for some kind of growth narrative that isn't just about price increases so who is Peter Rice I actually just saw him in Toronto he produced the new Chris Rock movie and of course he mentioned none of this was happening when I saw him but most importantly what does this changing of the top content executive mean for the movies and shows and other stuff on Netflix for that we waited a couple days to talk about this with Lucas Shaw our Monday guy back from his honeymoon today it's the next executive shocker and a possible new direction for Hollywood's biggest streamer from the ringer and puck I'm Matt Bellany and this is the town okay we are here with Lucas Shaw the snarkiest possible reporter in Hollywood welcome back Lucas great to be back so much happened while I was gone I know you leave town I leave town an Instagram video from my conference goes viral and then Netflix blows up its entire org structure and just know I was lying in bed Thursday night with my wife in Venice when the you first posted about the Bella news I did not sleep great that night because I was adamant that like I'm not working on vacation which I stuck to and related news I'm going to start paying you to go on vacation every couple months so that you can break the Netflix news while I'm gone uh yeah we're not talking about your interview with dana walden which did go viral and i you know whatever a lot of you don't need to revisit it and talk we're not going to talk about that i i think it's you know not great for her but whatever uh we are going to talk about the netflix situation because as you mentioned while you were gone netflix laid off a thousand employees then two days later i broke the news that bella bajaria the head of netflix's content operation is out this morning dan lynn the head of the netflix film unit followed her out the door so having thought about this for a couple days now why this change and why now i don't find the change surprising for people who have been following the company this year and certainly following the company for much longer right there has been there have been issues with what they with you know engaging basically not enough people are watching spending enough time on the internet and they're not following the company for a long time and they're not watching netflix told you that engagement not where we want to be it's not growing and the thing is is it's become a narrative this year but it's really been true for for the last couple years because they put out those reports and it's been growing for one or two percent and that's not good enough if you're in netflix um you can also just look at the nielsen numbers they're not growing share as much as they'd like to certainly relative to to youtube and they and they hit the knee-jerk reaction which is throw a bunch of low cost high engagement content on the platform and youtubers and all this stuff and it's still not enough well and whereas last year netflix had like a murderer's row of programming and it that should have been a sign it should have grown more when you had final squid game final stranger things new wednesday this year they've had probably the longest programming drought the company has had and i since i can remember but is that bella's fault there's two examples that one is it is her fault she is the chief content officer but two i also think the the reason why i consider this sort of like classic netflix and maybe sign that the netflix culture is alive and well is it's such a what have you done for me lately culture where like bella did a really good job for several years right and then she has a cold spell and it's like you're out yeah i mean she grew the international footprint the international stuff's doing much better she popularized or made it more populist content all of the crime docs all of the kind of what we might consider less prestigious stuff that got eyeballs she did all that she did all the things that ted when when ted put her in charge of programming it was all about we're going global and we're trying to we are no longer competing with hbo we are trying to replace the whole cable bundle and not just the cable bundle but basically the entire movie business and you have to go program all of that for the world and she pushed netflix into a lot of new areas and it was it worked for a really long time but then we reached a point in the last year maybe two where i think it started to feel like it wasn't clear to people what netflix was for right they had something for every one which meant that some people felt like they had something for no one or like there no no there didn't have a clear audience and they've pushed back on that but it's clear that they're not happy with it because they are cleaning house and as some of the big swings didn't work the will ferrell show was a disaster they didn't have a movie this summer to match k-pop demon hunters and happy gilmore 2 like they didn't they got their butts kicked at the emmys name the last netflix program that like took over culture in the way that i would say that they had basically every month for the last decade yeah no it's true and they would say you know east of eden is going nuts right now and they have a bunch of stuff coming out this fall that they're excited about i know i've heard all the arguments which is which may be true it will be hilarious if netflix sweeps the emmys next year based on bella's content that she got fired for but we're not there yet i will say when i when we were traveling and this is the first time i think this has been true in a while we based other than renting a couple of movies on amazon we basically only watch netflix because there was east of eden there's the new season of the diplomat and like those are both really good shows that are going to compete for a lot of awards next year and yeah they are you know under her i know this whole notion that she was blindsided though there was all these trade reports she was blindsided it's like what are they going to do tell her two days in advance that she's being fired in on thursday afternoon or wednesday night when it happened i'd also been told that earlier this year she was telling people that she was going to get fired yeah was that half joking or not i mean dan lynn people have been speculating about for months and months well dan lynn people have been speculating about since he got the job i know he started infuriating the agents but that was also kind of why he was hired to not spend as much on their movies and to say to these agents that had basically been able to overcharge netflix we're not doing that anymore and we're not just gonna make anything and yet he made a lot of enemies pretty quickly i mean i think they're going to get fired because they're going to get fired because they're going to get fired the only question with netflix was not whether they were going to make a change but how high up the food chain it was going to be right with he because bella had already had already kind of parted with peter friedlander who then went over to amazon kind of consolidated the tv head yes consolidated tv under jenny howe dan lynn had been her hire and you had to figure that there was going to be changes but the you know the the other things that i think fed into this is one you saw kind of a drip of the former netflix executives to these other companies and then companies where there was i mean it's changing now because of the warner merger but you basically had x netflix people all over paramount and x netflix people all over amazon because peter friedlander after going to amazon went and hired a bunch of netflix people and then you also had the steady drip of announcements about talent leaving right flicks david fincher sean levy uh who else the duffer brothers noah bomback like i i don't think that helped i don't think the awards thing helped because i know i again i've been told that that ted had been upset about the fact that he was ted sarandos had been upset with dan lynn that netflix didn't have enough awards movies for this year they went out and bought labola netflix this year and two years ago they bought amelia perez that's sort of been the strategy though i think yeah but that shouldn't have to be the strategy if you're going to spend billions of dollars on movies you should have your own homegrown oscar movies yeah i don't know it just it's interesting on the movie front ted seems to want it both ways he wants people to watch movies on netflix and change the viewing habits so that we all consider movies to be a home experience but he wants the kind of high quality noisy movie projects that create franchises and lasting ip and it's pretty clear how you do that you release your movies in theaters with full marketing spends that's what the public wants that's what the filmmakers want and ted he's he's going that direction but he's not all the way there yet and that'll lead into our next conversation but finish your thought but i'd also say that if you want if you want both right if you want to have shows that are cbs and hbo if you want to have movies that are disney and searchlight you tend you kind of need to to split up your executive group right because it you need to have a team that's solely focused on making one type of thing well that's what dan lynn did he changed it from a budgetary hierarchy to a genre organization where certain people were doing certain types of genre movies and so forth so they did that a little bit but didn't really work yeah i would almost say that budget is kind of more revealing in that way no because i i don't know if you're not making like those those awards movies they don't tend to be crazy expensive yeah unless it's unless it's chris for nolan so text i got this weekend from a very snarky executive rival too many gourmet cheeseburgers you get a lot of them but i don't know if you're going to get a lot of get fat have a heart attack and die the bella strategy i know this was not she hated this this she said she never said it someone else said it but it was like that it was the quote that came out of the new yorker piece i know but it was in the new yorker gourmet cheeseburgers whatever all right so let's move on because i think hold on you do you feel like we covered both the why but also the the why now they have earnings tomorrow right that's the part they need a new narrative they want they they can't deliver and we'll see but and ted just to be fair ted sarandos also says that they are on track to deliver their numbers for the year and let's not forget this is a company that made three billion dollars in profit last quarter it's not a struggling company but that's the funny thing about this is financially speaking the company has never been on stronger footing it's just not but it but look wall street much as netflix's culture is all about what have you done for me lately wall street is about what have you done for me lately and it's got to be there has to be a narrative for future growth and netflix has spent all year trying to sort of find their post warner deal narrative and they don't have it yet but you know what bella bajaria did not go after warner brothers and fail ted and greg peters did that so if you want to talk about scapegoating bella for the larger problems of the world they went after warner brothers now maybe it would have gone down anyways based on the engagement issues but i think the fact that they telegraphed to the market that they were scared about their future and needed this trove of ip and a library has changed the narrative on netflix pretty fundamentally and that was ted and greg that was not bella yeah i mean they would say that that narrative it's a short-term problem but yes all of that is all of that is true all right so i think the thing that most people want to know about is what this executive change signals about potential changes to the content strategy overall because you and i both know peter rice i literally sat next to him at a screening of wild horse nine at toronto a movie that bella bajaria probably would not have made much less gone to sea at toronto and he's a very different executive and i do wonder whether this signals changes coming to the content offering how so and are you talking and are you talking about the the the programming strategy in terms of what gets made or are you talking the programming strategy in terms of how it is released and marketed or all of the above all of it all of it i think first of all there will be a refocus on quality a sense that we need to i know i know you're already laughing we're just going to make the good shows now but i also i just don't know what a refocus on quality because they would say that they've been making quality right they would say that that they have something for everyone but i think that they will they will do more with more high-end prestige type creators that is i think what peter brings he brings filmmaker relationships and they will get more prestige oriented filmmakers to work with netflix now whether that comes with a strategic shift in the distribution strategy that's the big question is whether peter comes to this job saying i'm willing to come work for you but you have to do x y and z yeah you got to put four movies a year in theaters with big budgets or you have to i we want to experiment with more weekly tv show releases you need to do more marketing there's all the things that people have asked for which which netflix and ted in particular have been against but ted is softening a little on the theatrical stuff not on the binge model well and they've experimented with different ways of releasing and yes all of all of that stuff but whether they're ready to make kind of dramatic changes or peter did demand some of these things and let's not forget peter's experience includes a lot of oversight of sports at 21st century fox they obviously have a huge sports portfolio i think that is going to be a big part of the content offering and they're going to move more and more aggressively into nfl other sports leagues yeah and and peter is a is a sports fan um although a lot of a lot of that at fox was sort of run out of its own group not to say that he wasn't involved because he oversaw it but sports is always sort of like its own little uh its own little cottage industry in the media business i just think if we're looking for signs of what this indicates it indicates higher quality focus on creators it possibly might indicate we're going to do less of the lowest common denominator youtubey stuff although i'm not quite sure about that i think netflix is still going to pursue that stuff the third thing is i think they are going to lean harder into the ingestion of other networks whether you know this experiment in france with tf1 and having that on netflix i think they are going to try to juice their engagement and and build a bigger business around airing other services and even television networks via netflix netflix well it's the tension between being a service and a platform right netflix is greg versus ted sure yeah my understanding from conversations i've had about some of the other kind of some of the negotiations they've had or discussions they've had about being a platform is look i think there's no question that netflix has been is interested in it i've heard different things for a couple years now i think that they suffer a little bit from i don't know if it's arrogance or seeing themselves as the biggest platform player and so wanting term there are other people who are willing to offer terms that they have been less willing to offer okay but now maybe that's changed maybe i mean i to take a step back do you think that because the challenge for people who have tried to come in and change the way that netflix does things whether it was scott stuber in the movie business or any number like is that they run into all that ultimately it is not up to them it is up to the ceos and from when it was reed hastings and then reed and ted and now ted and greg they have not wanted to fully embrace kind of change the netflix playbook and do things the way that hollywood wants them to do it do you believe that either a peter has peter rice comes in with enough pull credibility whatever it is to shift them because other people thought they could shift ted and it didn't work and or b that the company is now feeling enough heat that it is more likely that they're going to be more open to changes and it will make more dramatic changes i feel like you're going to say the latter yeah i think b because we've seen it before when they had their great netflix correction in 2022 they did something they've they promised they would never do they launched an advertising business and they cracked down on password sharing yeah exactly but they're in that situation again right now but what they've done right now because i that's what part of i asked it what they've done right now is the change has been about that change there was not about personnel that change was about strategy yeah and the change right now is about personnel now new personnel tends to mean new strategy but um yeah what about this theory that peter rice is being brought in in part because he has experience integrating fox and disney staffs and so that netflix is going to go buy something that netflix is going to go out and buy a studio most likely nbc universal when it's split from comcast happens next year um i don't think that they need to hire peter to integrate companies no but it helps sure but there's their cfo has experience with integration they're like i don't think this is a sign that that's more likely to happen i mean they're certainly going to look at it i do not take higher changing your head of programming as a sign that any indication with regard to a deal i'm not saying they won't do a deal i think you and i both think that they will look at nbc universal as they as they did with warner brothers discovery but i think this is more a reflection of what we've been talking about which is that their programming hasn't been working and they felt like now is the time to to make a change and bring in a kind of a fresh perspective and a fresh leader and and and some of what you what we already talked about as well in terms of look peter is a unique executive in his experience he has a lot of experience in the film business he has a lot of experience in the television business he has a fair amount of experience in the sports business he sort of touches everything it's one of the reasons why he was widely seen as a potential successor at disney bob jpeg what a man fired peter rice and a purely selfish uh this is the second time in a row that peter rice's career has changed while i've been in italy because he got fired from disney when i was on vacation in italy in 2022. clearly he's monitoring your vacation schedule um ted said it in the statement this is an opportunity to take our slate to the next level particularly in the united states but it also i will say in the case of bryce uh you know peter had told people after leaving disney that he was kind of done with the corporate life he liked being a producer he liked doing that oh that's bullshit they all say that they all say that it's like oh excuse me 20 million dollars to pick which movies and shows to air i'll do that hey in richard plepler stayed on the sidelines he did that's true but i don't know these guys they all want back in so the question then becomes who's going to run the film group at netflix are you a believer of the mike and pam theory i i don't know i mean listen i think they would do it in a second if netflix was willing to put some of these movies in theaters which seems like they are at least willing to talk about it but it just seems odd that netflix would go out and hire the people that a have a reputation for spending just like their previous movie head did scott stuber and they went a different direction from him but with less commercial sensibility than scott maybe i don't know we could argue that and then b they didn't have the greatest run at warner's in terms of you know the the overall profitability of the slate now mike and pam would would make the argument that they did and that they had enough franchises and that they were hamstrung by david zaslov and all of the things that that you would make in that argument but it would it would seem a little odd that there's nobody out there other than mike and pam well it's not that there's nobody but look netflix had this job open just a few years ago and they they hired dan right the other yeah but they also they first well the other person they went after hard was david greenbaum but david greenbaum decided to stay at disney he did but only when disney gave him a much bigger job than he had at searchlight they gave him all of the live action studio which is still it's still a much smaller job than he would have if he ran movies at netflix oh my god and and you know the the film job at netflix you're making as many if not more movies than anyone else in town right at all the but even with their reduced you know that was the thing with scott stuber is that he was making so many movies and was under such pressure from ted to build out the talent and build out the studio that you necessarily have to kind of green light move on but it do but also do you think that getting rid of dan is it's not like peter right peter rice is done overhauling the organization that organization is filled with bella people right she's been there a long time yeah if one thing over the years it's that new leaders like to bring in their own folks oh yeah and i'm sure the resumes are flying over there because people want to work for peter rice people like him he's a good person to work for generally people think so i'm sure that there's going to be a lot more turnover there um you haven't answered the question who would you put in the film job and no disrespect to mike and pam like they are professionals and they have amazing filmmaker relationships and they would be able to get a class of filmmaker over to netflix that perhaps they haven't been able to work with lately i don't know would you have one head of film or would you or would you hire a couple of different people who do you could do that underneath the film head but you have to have someone who's ultimately responsible for the films i mean you could elevate from within you know there are people at netflix on the film side with taste although they fired the number two doug belgrad as well listen we are in a period of chaos and transition around town between netflix and the skydance merger with paramount and warner brothers half the movies being made around town are now in flux so there's going to be people jumping ship people going over there's going to be a lot of that and if i were peter i'd try to take advantage of that you know now that you say that i would probably try to hire one of the people from universal yeah peter kramer or someone like that the number two there yeah peter kramer jimmy horowitz one of those people like just say because donna langley now has a job equivalent donna langley has never really replaced herself running the movie studio i think she's and they i would say other than disney they've been the most successful studio we can debate which of them is more but universal probably is has a strategy that's going to need to be more similar to netflix's because they're they're not sitting on the wealth of ip that disney has i mean look people really like david greenbaum they could make another run of the movie and they're going to be more similar to netflix's because they're not him too if they wanted if if they wanted to do that if disney would let him out yeah which i mean that's the other thing is i wonder there's a little bit of the like revenge of peter rice now getting to go against disney after getting fired although i don't think he has any issues with um with josh tomorrow and honestly it's just a different business the the ip versus the no ip business i mean that's why universal seems so attractive to me to netflix over and over again they have shown that the lack of ip is a huge problem for them i mean look at this week you saw the nielsen chart what was the number one show wonka the golden ticket which is a reality game show based on willy wonka only reason it's popular is because of willy wonka right they know they need ip that's what ted and greg were looking at at warner brothers and i think that's not going to end so in a couple years we're going to have to wait and see what happens and i think that's is netflix still making poop cruise documentaries probably yeah i think so too i don't think that i don't think that they i don't think it's going to change what they're doing yeah they need to have something for everyone they just that sort but unless there is a feat like their strategy is not going to be we are just going to kind of narrow cast and focus on a particular audience they can change they can change how they go about bringing everyone in but it still is going to be like we need to have all the types of programming i think yeah and they think that it can get better that though that in each category they can make better movies and they can maybe more clearly define them and and as discussed if they bring in programming from other people and then and then we can get into an out on an algorithm versus programming debate right is it this is the you know this right here is uh an argument that the issue is when you when people are not spending more time watching when shows aren't working at netflix there's always a debate i think between is it the product's fault or is it the programming team's fault and they are right now saying it's not the product's fault it is the programming team's fault right and i'm not so sure if it isn't both could be both because people open up netflix and maybe it's not giving them what they want to watch yeah and do you guys think in the next year netflix has a couple movie deals with big time directors and are tied to theatrical releases i do yes yeah i think that that ship is sailed and ted lost he tried to get consumer behavior to switch to watching movies at home and the tide is going the other direction a documentary just made 15 million dollars in 855 theaters they've already started they they they did the deal with greta they the bola negra dan was given the green light to put that in theaters in order to to get the rights that can they're doing the charlie and the chocolate factory movie next year we're gonna we're already entering a point where we're going to have a movie that's going to be a movie that's going to be a movie where we're going to have four netflix movies a year in theaters and and he basically told you that the k-pop demon hunter sequel would go to theaters he didn't basically he did i saw the sony people at the conference and they're like what the fuck i know he didn't say he said it will be a broad release yes if peter rice who has spent the last few years making movies with filmmakers that he knew back from when he was at box search live danny boyle and on and on like he if he if he wants to try to get those people to make a movie he's going to have to do it he's going to have to do it he's going to have to take movies to netflix they're going to demand theatrical and he's going to tell ted if you want to work with these people we have to do it and they're going to do it i think he he tells ted before he takes the job i think that that's that's a conversation are we we agreed that we're going to be doing theatrical for like not every movie, but cause here's my view on your movie division. And I think that your real problem here is not just picking good movies. It's what you can offer filmmakers. And if I come to this job, I don't want to be hamstrung by the service. I want to be able to offer theatrical. That's a very easy conversation. And it seems like a conversation Peter would likely have with Ted, although neither of us knows whether that happened. Give me a week. All right. Thank you, Lucas. We are back with the call sheet, Craig, man, Elizabeth Holmes doc. You can see everything. I predicted it would get to 10 this weekend, got to 15 million on 885 screens. Biggest opening for a non music documentary since Fahrenheit. Nine 11 in 2004 biggest opening for a movie on less than a thousand screens since the Miley Cyrus, Hannah Montana movie in 3d. Oh, of course. 2008. Sure. You saw that. Of course you didn't. Yeah. I mean the, the word of mouth on this movie spread kind of like we thought it would. We're now, now that it's come out, I mean, everything written this week is just all about the movie. And also there's so much more now, like, reporting coming out opinion pieces about what the doc is gets right and doesn't get right. And now it feels like it's exploded into this whole other thing. Who's the bad guy. You know, who is Billy, the bad guy, or is she, is, you know, she gets, he getting manipulated by her. Or it's like, how did Nathan and Lance Oppenheim and orchestrate this and how much of it is actually documentary versus fiction. I know it's crazy. Uh, the best of it all spoiler. If you haven't seen it, the best piece of content so far was, was Amanda Seyfried on the red carpet of the Academy gala on Saturday night. For some reason, she was doing the press line even though she can't really talk about her role in the movie. And she wanted to talk about her emus. Chris Gardner at THR asked, what would you like to talk about now that you can't talk about the thing everyone wants to talk about? She's like, I'd like to talk about the emus or Halloween or Halloween or, you know, everything is just, I meant to be here. And I meant to be back home tomorrow. It's amazing. Uh, okay. So this one is interesting because this thing could get to like 50, 60 million. It'll be super interesting to see how it expands this next week. Is it moving to a full wide release? It, I believe they're going to go wide. Yeah. I believe they're going to go wide this weekend and considering they had 2000 sold out screenings, it was tough to find a ticket in LA this weekend. I think it's going to be crazy. We'll get to it. We'll get to it later in the week on the box office prediction, but this movie I think is going to get a best picture nomination for the Oscars. Maybe not a documentary nomination. The branch really hates reenactments. They really hate celebrity. We talked about that last week, but what my prediction is is I think when this movie lands on HBO max, which it's going to around the beginning of the year, I think they're going to add additional footage or some kind of, of companion piece to it because Nathan Fielder gave an interview to wired where he talked about how Elizabeth Holmes has been calling him, you know, called him recently and talked about it. Yeah. He said he spoke to her last week for the first time in six months. Totally. And you don't think he was filming that. I guarantee he was. I may, I imagine there's a lot more to say. I imagine there's stuff they cut out. That would be intriguing. The reaction from people coming out of this movie is often I could have watched three hours more of this. I think there's going to be some equivalent of a director's cut or some kind of a companion piece to go with it, which will be well-timed. I think for the Oscar campaign to kind of give it a little bump or some kind of additional thing. Not sure. This is not, I'm not, not reporting this. They've not told me they're doing this, but I could see them even putting this back in theaters for people to see this extra stuff because the fans of this, it's now sparked this entire online community. The number one stat from this weekend that was most impressive to me, 70% of the audience was 25 and under for a documentary that is three hours long. But that's like the eight 24 fan base. Totally. And Nathan and yes, but like, okay. Eight 24 makes a lot of movies and not all of them generate that kind of audience under 25. Yeah. But the people who like Nathan, in Fielder's style of content paired with a 24 is I think why this happened. It's also just unlike anything else. It's totally different. They did a great job marketing it. So, all right. I think that's going to happen more. You can see everything coming at some point. That's the show for today. I want to thank my guest, Lucas Shaw, producer, Craig Horlbeck, our editors, Jesse Lopez and Stefano Sanchez. And I want to thank you. We will see you a couple more times this week.