Netflix Cuts Film Chief Dan Lin After the Cost Bet

Netflix cut film chief Dan Lin on October 19, two and a half years after hiring him to spend less on fewer movies. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos rang him on Friday, October 16. Peter Rice, the new chief content officer, will run film until a successor is named.

Lin had told filmmakers in June that Netflix would not work with directors who still wanted a theatrical-first release. The company is now booking theaters, talking up big buzzy hits, and walking into earnings with its film desk empty.

Sarandos Called Friday and Lin Finished the Weekend

The call came a day after Netflix pushed out chief content officer Bela Bajaria, who had helped recruit Lin from his own company, Rideback, in April 2024. Lin still showed up. He was at the Academy Gala on Saturday, in the same room as Sarandos, and at a Sunday tastemaker screening of La Bola Negra on the Netflix campus. On Monday he met his feature staff, then Netflix put out statements from both men.

Sarandos said he had worked with Lin before 2024 and had watched “his dedication to quality filmmaking, rigor around dealmaking and strategy, and collaborative spirit” once Lin arrived. Lin thanked Sarandos, co-CEO Greg Peters, and Bajaria, and called the job “a great privilege.” The tone was clean. The calendar underneath it was not.

THE WEEK THE FILM DESK EMPTIED

1. October 14, 2026: Sarandos and Peters tell staff the company is cutting about 1,000 jobs, roughly 6 percent of the workforce, with the heaviest hits in product, tech, legal, and HR. Film vice president Doug Belgrad, Lin’s right hand, and independent-film executive Sheroum Kim lose their jobs the same week.
2. October 15, 2026: Bajaria leaves after nearly 10 years. Netflix names former Disney television chairman Peter Rice as chief content officer, effective October 26.
3. October 16, 2026: Sarandos tells Lin he is out, according to people familiar with the call.
4. October 17, 2026: Lin attends the Academy Gala.
5. October 18, 2026: He appears at the La Bola Negra screening to back the filmmakers.
6. October 19, 2026: He meets the feature team. Netflix confirms the exit and says Rice will oversee film until a new head is named.
7. October 20, 2026: Netflix is scheduled to post third quarter 2026 financial results at about 1:01 p.m. Pacific Time, with a live interview at 1:45 p.m.
8. October 21, 2026: Sarandos and Peters hold a companywide town hall on strategy after the cuts.
9. October 26, 2026: Rice’s first official day.

People inside the company had spent days saying Lin would survive until Rice arrived and took a look. He did not. A successor will wait for Rice, and people close to the search say no interview process is underway yet.

The Job Was Fewer Films at Lower Cost

Lin replaced Scott Stuber, the former Universal vice chairman who had used big budgets and theatrical courtesy to pull in Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro, and other heavy names. Stuber’s slate mixed Oscar winners with expensive titles that did not travel, including the Russo brothers’ The Electric State. Netflix hired Lin, a producer, to pull the other way.

From 2008 to 2024 he had run Rideback, the shop behind the Lego movies, the It films, the Sherlock Holmes pictures, and the live-action Aladdin. Those films took in $6 billion at the global box office. Bajaria’s advice, Lin later wrote, was simple: be yourself. He reorganized the movie group by genre instead of budget, with deputies covering lanes such as science fiction, rom-coms, and family, and he spent one day a week with animation. He wanted more comedies, romantic comedies, and book adaptations, the mid-size pictures theatrical studios had stopped making.

In a June 2026 interview he said he had greenlit or acquired 88 movies, a pace no traditional studio chief matches, even while he talked about spending less on fewer, better films. He cut fat actor paydays, filled holes Stuber left in the calendar with titles such as Nonnas, Happy Gilmore 2, and The Thursday Murder Club, and told talent the Netflix cafeteria was the meeting, not a steakhouse. For the survival thriller Apex, he and deputy Kira Goldberg took Charlize Theron to that cafeteria to see if she would “roll up her sleeves.” He said his goal was to make a big company feel small.

He was about halfway through a five-year deal. The person who hired him is gone. So is the lieutenant he brought in as his first big executive hire after a run as president of Columbia Pictures.

What Lin’s Movie Slate Delivered

The app still got crowded. Lin-era titles punched into Netflix’s most-watched lists even as the company complained that hours watched were not rising fast enough. Engagement grew 2 percent in the first half of 2026, to 97 billion hours, and Sarandos has said the service is “not growing as fast as I want us to.” Shares have fallen more than 40 percent over the past year, from a 52-week high of $124.86 to about $70 on October 19. Second-quarter revenue was $12.6 billion, up 13 percent, with a 33 percent operating margin. The content bill sits around $20 billion a year.

The most-watched movie in Netflix history is still Sony Pictures Animation’s KPop Demon Hunters, which took Best Animated Feature and Best Original Song at the 2026 Oscars. That film was greenlit under Stuber. Lin’s bragging rights sit on a different pile: cheaper live-action, a few animation hits, and bookish crowd-pleasers.

LIN-ERA TITLES ON THE SERVICE

He also picked up awards titles, including the Cannes winner La Bola Negra, which opened in four New York and Los Angeles theaters the weekend he was already on his way out and posted a $69,300 per-screen average, the best opening of that kind for a Spanish-language film. Quentin Tarantino liked The Rip enough to run it at his Vista theater in Los Angeles. The complaint from people who watch the Top 10 is not that nothing hit. It is that the hits did not keep reseeding the list the way Stuber’s era did, and that a $14 million vacation rom-com does not change a stock chart.

Cutting the film boss after he filled the slate with mid-budget comedies and book adaptations looks, to a lot of working film people, like punishing the brief. Others are glad anyone who would still greenlight a $200 million streaming original is gone. Both readings were loud within hours of the news. Neither matches the job Lin was given in 2024, which was to stop writing blank checks.

He Told Filmmakers to Skip Theaters

The line that will follow him is the one he offered in June. “There is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical,” he said. “Those are filmmakers that we’ve accepted we just won’t work with.” He called Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew an exception, not a new rule. He also admitted he had learned, the hard way, that when directors asked him for the truth they did not always want it.

That hard line did not age well. During the failed run at Warner Bros., Sarandos talked up a 45-day exclusive theatrical window. After Skydance closed its Paramount-Warner merger on October 6, Netflix was left to prove it could still make movies that travel without that library. The company is now reporting some theatrical grosses and giving select titles real screens before the app. Family IP is first in line: Gerwig’s Narnia film, a $250 million theatrical-first bet due in 2027, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. David Fincher’s Cliff Booth sequel is due for a short Imax run before it hits the service. Lin had been more open than Bajaria after the Warner loss, saying “Give us time.” He ran out of it.

People familiar with a Zoom on Narnia earlier this year said Lin was dismissive with Gerwig about the film’s progress, that word moved fast inside Netflix, that Bajaria called producer Amy Pascal to smooth it over, and that Gerwig’s agent Bryan Lourd went to Sarandos. Lin was then taken off the movie and Belgrad stepped in, until Belgrad was laid off. The same people said that episode did not cause the firing. It did show how little room Lin had once a $250 million exception needed a different kind of handler. Fincher, separately, chose not to renew a long exclusive deal with the streamer, though people involved say there was no feud with Lin.

When I took this job, Bela gave me a simple piece of advice: Be yourself. You work here because it’s personal. Because of that unspoken pact between your individual passion for movies and the audiences we serve. To them, movies aren’t about business. They’re about feeling something.

Dan Lin, Monday memo to his film staff

He is not going back to Rideback. That label still has a production deal with Netflix, so the company will keep paying for a version of his taste after it stopped paying him to run the building.

Three Layers of Movie Leadership Left in a Week

Lin’s exit completes a wipe of the film chain Bajaria built. Sarandos told staff he saw “an opportunity to take our slate to the next level, especially in UCAN,” the U.S. and Canada market, “where we have an outsize impact in creating big, buzzy hits.” That is a different sentence from spend less, skip theaters, and make someone’s favorite movie in a genre.

The October 14 memo from Sarandos and Peters said the mission, “to entertain the world,” is ambitious and that the business is “strong and growing” and on track for the full-year forecast. Product, tech, legal, and HR took the biggest cuts. Film and television still lost senior names. On the TV side, Lisa Lang McMullen, James Oh, Carolina Garcia, and Andrew McQuinn were among those let go.

THE FILM CHAIN THAT IS GONE

• Bela Bajaria: Chief content officer since 2023, at Netflix since 2016, replaced by Rice after she helped hire Lin and expand live sports and unscripted.
• Doug Belgrad: Lin’s first major hire, the manager of live-action original-film managers, laid off in the 1,000-person cut after toasting Ben Affleck’s Animals earlier in October.
• Sheroum Kim: Independent-film executive who joined in 2019, cut in the same reorg.
• Dan Lin: Film chairman since April 2024, told on October 16, confirmed on October 19, five years of contract still half unused.

Three layers of movie leadership are gone before Rice’s first day. Asked recently whether more cuts were coming, Sarandos winked and stepped away. The keeper-test culture Reed Hastings built, the idea that Netflix should swap people the way a championship team swaps players, is the only part of this week that looks familiar.

Peter Rice Inherits Film With No Permanent Head

Netflix named Peter Rice chief content officer on October 15 and set his start for October 26. He will lead scripted and unscripted series, film, and live events worldwide. Sarandos called him “one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry,” pointing to a run as chairman of Walt Disney Television and, before that, president of 21st Century Fox, including Fox Searchlight. Disney fired him in 2022. He has been producing films since, including the 28 Years Later pictures.

Until a film chair is named, Rice holds that desk too. Names in circulation include former Warner Bros. motion-picture bosses Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, who were passed over in the Skydance merger and, as of this week, were still finishing the payout of their Warner contracts. People close to De Luca say he would report to Rice if the job came with a real theatrical promise, and that a 45-day window to streaming is not a promise he could sell to the directors he has worked with. A lunch with Sarandos fed the rumor. A rival studio boss said over the weekend that people will be surprised by whom Rice picks. Treat that as smoke until there is a start date.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The interim: Rice oversees film until Netflix names a permanent head, and that announcement is waiting on his arrival.
• The calendar: He starts October 26, after earnings on October 20 and a staff town hall on October 21.
• The leftover slate: Narnia in 2027, the Cliff Booth sequel, Here Comes the Flood with Denzel Washington and Robert Pattinson, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory still need a studio champion.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• De Luca and Abdy: No offer is on paper while Warner payouts remain open, and people who know them also float a stand-alone feature company.
• The window: Netflix has not said whether Lin’s no-theatrical rule is dead or whether Narnia stays the exception.

The movies already shot will land with whoever Rice hires, or with Rice himself if that search drags. Lin did the cost job he was handed in April 2024, then lost it the week Netflix had to explain to investors why hours and the share price stalled. The next film chief will be hired to make noise in theaters Lin spent two and a half years telling directors not to wait for.