Netflix Bets on Peter Rice After Bela Bajaria’s Exit

Netflix is replacing chief content officer Bela Bajaria with former Disney television chairman Peter Rice, effective October 26, after cutting about 1,000 jobs. The company posted the change on October 15, one day after its largest layoff round since 2022. Rice walks in six days after third-quarter results, with the film chair already vacant.

Ted Sarandos, the co-CEO, is placing a clear wager. He wants an at-scale operator with talent relationships and a Wall Street ear, after a decade in which Bajaria widened the slate into unscripted, live events and sports and still watched engagement stall and the share price slide.

The Bet on a Fox Operator

Netflix said Rice will run the global content group across scripted and unscripted series, film and live events in every region. Bajaria is leaving after nearly 10 years, most recently as chief content officer, a title she received in January 2023. She joined in 2016 from Universal Television, where she had been president, and first built the streamer’s unscripted shop plus licensing and co-productions.

Sarandos sold the hire in the language of a turnaround, not a tribute tour. He called Rice one of the most effective at-scale operators in the business, with sharp business instincts, deep talent ties, and a career spent across television and film.

Peter is one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry. His business acumen is sharp, his talent relationships are exceptionally strong, and his experience across TV and film is deep and broad.

Ted Sarandos, co-CEO, Netflix announcement

The company bio behind that praise is a Fox machine, not a streaming original. At Disney, Rice oversaw ABC, Fox Broadcasting, Fox Sports, ABC News, ABC Studios, Disney Channel, Freeform, FX, Hulu, National Geographic, Onyx Collective and Twentieth Century Fox Television, more than 300 shows and 4,000 hours a year. The list under his watch includes The Simpsons, American Idol, Modern Family, This Is Us, The Bear, Abbott Elementary, Shogun and Only Murders in the Building, plus the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals and FIFA World Cup finals. Disney took 147 Primetime Emmy nominations in 2022 and 146 in 2021 while he was in the chair.

Earlier he was president of 21st Century Fox and chief executive of Fox Networks Group. At Fox Searchlight he put out Slumdog Millionaire, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine and Sideways. In the years after Disney, Sarandos told staff, he produced with Alex Garland, Danny Boyle, Chris Rock, Jason Reitman and Aaron Sorkin at Sony and A24.

Rice’s own statement stayed polite and wide. He thanked Bajaria for the global team and said Netflix had shown it would take chances on distinctive voices. He did not talk about engagement, the stock, or the Warner bid the company lost.

Bajaria Built Live Sports and a Global Slate

The memo Sarandos sent staff on October 15 is the cleanest record of what Bajaria actually built, and it is not a thin slate. He traced current Netflix back to her initiatives and then used that list as the setup for a different brief.

WHAT SARANDOS CREDITED TO HER

• Early unscripted: She launched the unscripted business with the Queer Eye reboot and titles such as Insatiable.
• Studio partners: Early co-productions included You, before she moved up to run global television.
• International hits: Lupin, Squid Game, YuYu Hakusho, Heeramandi: The Diamond Bazaar and Cien años de soledad sat on the same list as U.S. series The Diplomat and The Night Agent.
• Live and sports: WWE, the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight and the NFL were named as her expansion, not a side bet.
• Film reset: Sarandos said she helped shift movies toward fewer, bigger titles, citing KPop Demon Hunters, the Cliff Booth film, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, La Bola Negra and Possible Love.

That live-sports push is still on the calendar she leaves behind. Netflix has already booked a Christmas Day doubleheader on Netflix with Green Bay at Chicago and Buffalo at Denver, plus a Thanksgiving Eve game, and WWE Raw still runs live on Mondays. KPop Demon Hunters became a breakout and won an Academy Award on the film side she and Dan Lin oversaw.

The thanks were real and the ending was not. Hollywood accounts of the week say Bajaria asked Sarandos about the ouster rumors on the evening of October 14, before a private screening of Nobody Wants This, and learned then that she was out. She had been on stage in Cannes days earlier. People around her described the exit as abrupt. She declined to comment.

Why Sarandos Reached for Peter Rice

Sarandos has used this move before. In September 2020 he replaced Cindy Holland, an 18-year Netflix executive who had run English-language series, with Bajaria. Holland later landed at Skydance and was pushed aside as Casey Bloys took charge of streaming after the Warner close. The 2026 version is faster, and it sits on worse numbers.

Netflix shares are down 26 percent in 2026, a slide that has erased more than $135 billion in market value this year, according to market tallies published on October 20. Sarandos told a Bloomberg conference the company is not growing as fast as he wants. In his last engagement update he said Netflix grew 2 percent on 200 billion hours of watching, and he added that not all of those hours are equal.

The failed studio purchase sits under that chart. Netflix spent late 2025 and 2026 chasing Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets, then lost the fight. The Paramount-Skydance takeover of Warner Bros. closed on October 6 in a deal valued at $111 billion including debt. Netflix could not buy a library, so it is trying to hire the kind of executive who used to run one.

Rice had dinner in late September with Ynon Kreiz, who soon after became co-chief executive at Skydance. Talk around that meal is one of the spurs that pushed Netflix to lock him up. Friends had heard Rice say he had no interest in becoming an executive again. Sarandos moved anyway, and he told staff he had known Rice for years and liked the straightforward style.

Jasmine Dotiwala, a television journalist, called letting Bajaria go the worst decision Netflix could have made, arguing she knew the audience and the culture. That defense is the other half of the bet. Sarandos is trading a global programmer who built Squid Game and Bridgerton for a man whose last corporate job was running Disney’s general entertainment stack, and he is doing it in public, in the same week as the cuts.

Talent Left for Theaters Netflix Would Not Open

The content chair is also empty of some of the names that defined Bajaria’s middle years. Sarandos has described each exit as personal, not a policy change. The destinations still point one way: people who wanted a theatrical door walked toward studios that would open one.

WHERE THE OVERALL DEALS WENT

Matt Duffer put the theatrical point in one line. “The biggest draw to us was just to be able to do something theatrical, which is not something Netflix does,” he said. Sarandos told the brothers they were 40 and should not wake up at 60 wishing they had tried tentpoles. Their first Paramount feature is dated November 3, 2028. Netflix keeps the Stranger Things universe, including the animated Tales from ’85.

Levy said he would “forever cherish the incredible ride 21 Laps has had with Netflix,” and he still has the hockey drama The Sticks in the pipeline. Sarandos said an overall deal is a constant fight for time when the other commitment is Star Wars, and that Levy’s television deal sitting at Disney therefore makes sense. Fincher, Sarandos said, has not made a movie outside Netflix since 2014 and is not leaving for a rival slate; the Brad Pitt Cliff Booth film is still due in November.

The ledger is not only losses. Netflix signed Ryan Coogler to an overall deal in June after his time at Disney, and it renewed Shonda Rhimes. The pattern still holds: the people who wanted a cinema release stopped treating Netflix as home base, and the company that would not be a studio is now reporting box office for La Bola Negra and preparing Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew for a full theatrical opening in February.

Disney’s Seven-Minute Goodbye Still Follows Him

The operator Netflix is hiring is also the executive Bob Chapek fired in June 2022. Chapek called Rice into a meeting that ran about seven minutes and told him he was not a good fit for the new Disney culture. Dana Walden, then his deputy, took the job and has stayed inside Disney leadership. Rice had been a possible successor to run the company in some Hollywood handicapping before Bob Iger’s first exit, and Iger had brought him in with the 21st Century Fox entertainment assets in 2019.

People at Disney described a clash of styles. Rice came out of Rupert Murdoch’s shop, where fiefdoms were the point. Disney wanted a more collaborative stack. Chapek had renewed Rice’s contract into 2024 and then paid it out. Rice’s farewell note to staff called the tenure a pleasure and a privilege. Disney’s board, the same week, put out a statement backing Chapek.

That history is the risk inside Sarandos’s wager. Rice has the relationships and the hours. He also left his last corporate job as the man who would not fold into the culture, and he has spent the years since making films rather than running a 4,000-hour machine. Netflix is a tech company that just cut product, technology, legal and HR along with parts of film and marketing. A prominent agent, talking after Bajaria’s ouster, put the mood in one sentence.

We don’t live in Hollywood right now. We live in Silicon Valley.

A prominent talent agent, after Bajaria’s exit

The same agent called the handling of an executive of Bajaria’s standing shameful and said it added to the feeling that everyone now works by Silicon Valley rules. Rice is being welcomed in hallways as a total pro and a gentleman. Those two readings can both be true, and they do not cancel the bet. They are the terms of it.

Dan Lin Exits Before Rice’s First Day

The film job did not wait for October 26. Dan Lin, who took over Netflix film in 2024 after Scott Stuber’s big-check era, is out. Netflix confirmed the departure on October 19. Rice will oversee the film group until a new head is named. Lin had already lost his deputy, Doug Belgrad, and indie chief Sheroum Kim in the layoff round.

Lin said it had been a privilege to lead the team and thanked Sarandos, co-CEO Greg Peters and Bajaria. Sarandos praised Lin’s rigor around deals and his collaborative spirit. The timing is the tell. Hollywood accounts say Sarandos called Lin on October 16, the day after Bajaria’s announcement. Lin still went to the Academy Gala on Saturday and to a La Bola Negra screening on Sunday. By Monday the chair was empty.

Lin had been hired to make fewer, cheaper, tighter movies after the Stuber years. He also sat over the first stretch in which Netflix treated theatrical as an exception, then found itself reporting box office and carving out Narnia as a wide release. Names circulating for the film job include Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy, the former Warner Bros. Pictures chiefs. Until someone takes it, the man arriving to run all content owns the movie problem on day one.

THE WEEK THE CONTENT CHAIR CHANGED

1. October 14, 2026: Netflix finishes a cut of about 1,000 jobs, roughly 6 percent of staff, its largest round since 2022. Bajaria learns she is leaving that evening.
2. October 15, 2026: Netflix names Rice chief content officer, effective October 26, and posts Sarandos’s memo to staff.
3. October 16, 2026: Sarandos calls Lin to tell him the film job is over, according to people briefed on the call.
4. October 19, 2026: Netflix confirms Lin’s exit. Rice will run film until a replacement is named.
5. October 20, 2026: Netflix reports third-quarter results after the market close.
6. October 21, 2026: Sarandos and Peters host a companywide town hall, billed as mostly questions.
7. October 26, 2026: Rice’s first day as chief content officer.

Changing the people who pick the shows does not, by itself, take back hours that have moved to free video. That is the hole in the wager, and it is the thing earnings will not fix in one afternoon. Rice can re-open talent doors that the Duffers and Levy walked through. He cannot invent a new Stranger Things on a six-day clock.

The UCAN Memo Names the Job Now

The most specific sentence in Sarandos’s staff note was not the tribute. It was the assignment. He said he saw a chance to take the slate to the next level, especially in UCAN, the company’s label for the United States and Canada, where Netflix has an outsize impact on big, buzzy hits that drive conversation. That line is why Rice, a man who ran ABC, FX and Hulu, got the call instead of another global lieutenant from Bajaria’s bench.

THE NUMBERS UNDER THE HIRE

• The cut: About 1,000 jobs, roughly 6 percent of the workforce, the largest round since 2022.
• The stock: Down 26 percent in 2026, with more than $135 billion in market value gone this year.
• The hours: Engagement up 2 percent on 200 billion hours in the last update Sarandos cited.
• The calendar: Earnings October 20, town hall October 21, Rice’s first day October 26.

Bajaria’s decade is the catalog still on the service: Squid Game, Bridgerton, Wednesday, the live NFL and WWE, the unscripted factory. Rice’s brief is hits that travel from the United States outward, plus a film group that has lost its head before he arrives, plus talent that already learned it can get a theatrical deal somewhere else. He starts on October 26. The town hall is the night before.