Netflix Film Chief Dan Lin Is Out as Peter Rice Takes Interim Charge of the Movie Division

LOS ANGELES

Netflix's film division is changing hands for the second time in less than three years. The streamer said on Monday that Dan Lin, the producer who has run Netflix Film since the spring of 2024, will leave the company, marking the second senior executive departure in less than a week at a moment when Netflix's growth and engagement are under open scrutiny. Peter Rice, the former Disney executive who was announced on Thursday as the replacement for departing chief content officer Bela Bajaria, will oversee the film division until a new head is announced, the company said.

Two exits in five days

The speed of the reshuffle is the story inside the story. On Thursday, Netflix said Bajaria would leave after nearly a decade with the platform, ending a run in which she became one of the most powerful executives in television, and that Rice would succeed her. Days later, Lin is out as well, and Bloomberg reported that Doug Belgrad, a veteran entertainment executive and a former deputy to Lin, was also let go last week. Reporting by Variety, cited across the industry on Monday, put the departures in the context of a wider restructuring: roughly 1,000 employees were laid off last week, and Reuters reported the company is cutting about 6 percent of its workforce. Netflix has not publicly named a successor for the film job, and the timing leaves the division in interim hands on the eve of a major earnings moment: Netflix is scheduled to report third-quarter results after markets close on Tuesday.

The backdrop is a candid one by corporate standards. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has recently said the company is "not growing as fast as I want us to," Reuters noted, and engagement data has pointed to viewers spending more time on creator-led video platforms such as YouTube. That is the environment in which the film job is now open: the world's largest streamer acknowledging, in public, that attention is the contest it is currently not winning quickly enough.

Lin's three years, and the hit that defined them

Lin arrived at Netflix in April 2024, succeeding Scott Stuber, who had overseen the company's original film division since 2017 and built it into a volume-first operation. Lin came with a producer's pedigree few executives can match: he founded the production company Rideback and, as a producer and as a senior executive at Warner Bros. Pictures, was behind the "Sherlock Holmes" films, "The Lego Movie" franchise and the blockbuster adaptations of Stephen King's "It," according to Reuters and Bloomberg. Variety reported that during his Netflix tenure he greenlit or acquired more than 88 movies, a slate that included titles such as "Apex," "The Rip" and "Remarkably Bright Creatures."

The defining success came in feature animation. During Lin's tenure, Netflix released "KPop Demon Hunters," which became a breakout hit for the service and won an Academy Award, bolstering the streamer's feature animation strategy, Reuters reported. It is a measure of how abruptly the ground shifted that, by multiple accounts, Lin was still on the company's public circuit in his final days in the job: he attended Saturday's Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles and was spotted Sunday evening at a tastemaker screening for "La Bola Negra" on the Netflix campus, according to Variety's reporting as summarized by the Daily Caller. On Monday he was preparing to address his team and say his goodbyes.

What changes now

For subscribers, nothing changes on the home screen this week; the slate Lin built will roll out on its own schedule for many months. For the industry, the questions are structural. Rice now effectively holds both the content chief's office and, on an interim basis, the film division, and Variety's reporting suggested new leadership arrangements would be clarified quickly. Screen Rant, summarizing the same reporting, noted that the transition is arriving alongside an evolution in how Netflix treats movies themselves, including plans to report box-office grosses as the company leans further into theatrical releases, with "La Bola Negra" cited as an early example. There was also immediate speculation about Lin's next move: the Daily Caller, citing Variety, reported that former Warner Bros. film heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy were expected to speak with Lin about a possible role in their organization — a return, in one form or another, to the studio system where he built his name.

None of that speculation changes the plain facts of Monday. Netflix, mid-restructuring and mid-scrutiny, has now parted with its chief content officer and its film chief inside a single week, and will explain itself to investors on Tuesday with an interim structure at the top of its movie business. The streamer that taught Hollywood to release films at scale is, for the moment, deciding who gets to choose them. For more of our entertainment coverage, see the full news file, including our look at Netflix's Narnia plans.