Netflix has a new boss in the movie division. We told you earlier in the month how the new boss Dan Lin had been taking a data-driven approach to their movie slate.
His reputation in Hollywood is a man that comes in on budget, and under control. He had a really blunt assessment when evaluating the past Netflix state of pretty big-budget movies:
“The movies weren’t great and the financials didn’t add up”.
He started in his new role on April 1st and things are changing at speed over there. In just two weeks he has started his clear out. A report in The New York Times says fifteen people from the creative film executive group have been canned, including two directors and a VP.
The film department has been restructured to be organized by genre. Before it was split by budget level. There will be no more sizeable upfront deals for talent. They will focus on lower budgets, higher quality, and a broader spread of movies.
There will be fewer actor and high-profile director-driven projects greenlit simply because of the names involved.
The report also pulls out a casualty of this approach. Zero Dark Thirty and Point Break director Kathryn Bigelow’s Aurora is no longer in development at Netflix. The high-profile movie was based on David Koepp’s book about characters coping with the collapse of the social order, set against a catastrophic worldwide power crisis with Koepp adapting his own book as the screenwriter.
That is now not going to happen.
Zack Snyder may be nervously looking over his shoulder right now.
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