UPDATED with statements from Netflix and Lin after 8:44 a.m. post: Dan Lin is out as film boss at Netflix in a move that has been largely speculated for weeks. Insiders at the streamer have denied that Lin and even Bela Bajaria were on the chopping block, but here we are.
Lin is meeting with his feature staff Monday morning for a post-mortem after the news. Per sources close to the situation, a successor to Lin won’t be named until the arrival of Peter Rice, who is taking over Netflix’s Chief Content Officer role from Bajaria.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said this morning in a statement: “I started working with Dan well before he joined us in 2024 and his strength as a producer was always clear. Once he joined Netflix, I saw up close how his dedication to quality filmmaking, rigor around dealmaking and strategy, and collaborative spirit elevated our film business. I’m grateful to Dan for everything he’s done for Netflix films.”
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Lin added, “It’s been a great privilege to lead this incredible team and work with amazing filmmakers and talent to bring their movies to the world. Thank you to Ted, Greg and Bela for the opportunity.”
We caught up with Sarandos recently and asked whether more cuts were coming, following a week in which the streamer announced 1,000 layoffs, or 6% of its global workforce. In what seemed like a polite dodge, he winked and stepped away; interpret that as you may.
While this was going, we hear Lin was informed of his firing over the weekend.
Lin’s exit comes in the wake of last week’s pink-slips and Netflix’s recent slow growth, and minimal overall viewership spike. Wall Street is bracing for what is expected to be a downer quarter from the OTT service. At the time of this post, Netflix shares were trading at $69.76, off 1%; the 52-week high on Netflix stock is $124.86. A companywide town hall scheduled for Wednesday at Netflix with Sarandos and co-CEO Greg Peters will certainly be an interesting one.
Many were shocked when the ax swung last week and it missed Lin’s head, landing on his lieutenant co-head of film Doug Belgrad. It was seen that Belgrad was an extra layer at the top of Netflix’s film brass that could easily be let go, dollar-wise. Lin was expected to be safe until Rice took over officially on October 26. It was at that point in time the exec planned to assess the situation.
What is all boils down to is this question: Netflix, what is it you exactly want? All of streaming has turned into basic cable as we get farther away from Covid, and Netflix looked to Lin in April 2024 post-Scott Stuber to ratchet down the quantity of features and at a lower cost. He arrived after being a producer at his own hub, Rideback. From 2008-2024, Lin produced movies that minted $6 billion at the global box office.
Lin did exactly what Netflix asked, steering away from overpriced $200 million-plus, non-downstream features like Red Notice, The Irishman and The Electric State.
However, he had a no-nonsense approach to filmmakers, and hand no problem reportedly pushing back on prestige content creators like Greta Gerwig and Ben Affleck. During the Lin regime, one source told us that relationships with filmmakers were fraying. Recently, The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth filmmaker David Fincher opted not to renew his longtime exclusive contract with the streamer. That said, we’re also hearing there was never any bad blood between Fincher and Lin.
During Lin’s run, Netflix saw its most viewed movie of all-time, Sony’s KPop Demon Hunters (325.1M global views). However, that was greenlit under the Stuber administration. For Lin and Belgrad, their bragging rights include War Machine ($80M production cost, 147M views), the animated movie Swapped (144.9M views, which broke into the streamer’s top 10 all-time list), The Rip ($100M production cost, 136M views), Happy Gilmore 2 (135.1M), Apex (129M), Thrash (100M views) and People We Meet on Vacation ($14M production cost, 77.1M). Still there wasn’t a consistent reseeding of the Top 10 Most Popular list like there was during the Stuber era.
Also during the Lin regime, he acquired two-time Oscar winner Emila Pérez in addition to the streamer’s current awards contender, Cannes winner La Bola Negra.
Just as Lin is being shown the door, Netflix is finally embracing theatrical with respectable window releases and the reporting of grosses for select Q3, Q4 and Q1 titles including next year’s $200M+ Gerwig-directed Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew. In the four-theater New York City and Los Angeles launch of La Bola Negra this weekend, Netflix done good on a small scale as the pic notched the best opening per-screen average for a Spanish movie of $69,300, and the second best overall for a non-English movie after Parasite‘s $13K.
If Netflix wants its movies to be a gong around the world, then it needs to embrace theatrical. That’s a tough maneuver for them since Wall Street doesn’t want them to be a traditional motion picture studio. In the streamer’s pursuit of Warner Bros, Sarandos began to drink the Kool-Aid on theatrical, conceding to a 45-day exclusive theatrical window (though to streaming, not PVOD; still not an ideal situation for exhibitors or filmmakers).
Now that Netflix is reporting grosses, will it spend for the weekend win? Before, the streamer would shove films into limited theaters to qualify for the Oscars, a strategy that doubled as an in-theater advertisement for the service. So far, Netflix’s No. 1 movie at the weekend box office was late August 2025’s KPop Demon Hunters Singalong with $19M.
It’s interesting to note that at a presser earlier this year, Bajaria and Lin were not in lockstep when asked about the streamer’s future with theatrical after losing the Warner Bros bid. Following Sarandos’ public campaign to guarantee an exclusive 45-day window, Bajaria took Netflix’s standard line about theatrical: It’s not what the company is about; it’s there for stunting purposes. Lin was more optimistic, saying, “Give us time.”
After being passed over by Skydance for top jobs at the new post-merger Paramount-Warner Bros, we hear that former Warner Bros Motion Picture bosses Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are in the home stretch this week of finalizing the payout of their WB contracts by David Ellison. Until they’re closed, they can’t entertain job offers.
Those close to De Luca tell us he’d have no problems reporting into Rice if offered the Netflix job, though Netflix would need to make a fire-breathing commitment to theatrical. The notion of a 45-day theatrical window to streaming isn’t a prospect De Luca (and Abdy) could make to the filmmakers with which they’ve worked, e.g., Ryan Coogler, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ridley Scott. One theory, that De Luca and Abdy are bound to raise capital for their own feature operation, seems like the more practical future for them.
All this smoke over De Luca and Abdy heading to Netflix came about due to a friendly lunch they had with Sarandos. The meet-up has spawned gossip that Sarandos was full-on courting the duo.
If Sarandos and Rice bring in the filmmaker-friendly duo, the question becomes whether they’ll put up guardrails around them. When it came to De Luca and Abdy justifying the lofty costs for Anderson’s One Battle After Another, Coogler’s Sinners, Tom Cruise’s Digger and so on, David Zaslav didn’t blink an eye. Will Sarandos allow them the same greenlight independence he granted Stuber? Or will he expect them to count coins like Lin? Riddle us that, Mr. Sarandos.
“Netflix isn’t a place where they talk about film,” says one creator who has worked with them. “They’re all about the process, the algorithm and breaking the code, which still makes Lin a good workhorse for them as he’s also about process.”
There’s a rumor out there that despite the notion that De Luca and Abdy are joined at the hip, historically they haven’t been. Some believe there’s a world in which Abdy could entertain an offer sans De Luca from Netflix once her WB contract is paid out. “Sure, there is a world where that could happen,” says one source with knowledge of the situation.
Still, there’s no solid definite word as to who might fill Lin’s vacancy. No interview process is going on as of yet.
A rival studio boss complimented over the weekend, “I think you’ll be surprised as to who Peter Rice selects.”
Meanwhile, we hear Lin will not be headed back to Rideback, the label he created. Rideback and Netflix have a production deal.
But still, no matter how the greenlight process is improved at Netflix, there’s a new sign of the times for the streamer.
“If you want to know where the young crowd is looking, Meta just introduced Muse. People are heading back to cinemas, and streaming has become basic cable,” said one Netflix vet. “They can change [and] shuffle as many executives as they want, and it still won’t make a difference.”
