“When I took this job, Bela gave me a simple piece of advice: Be yourself,” wrote Dan Lin in his exit email to Netflix staff, following the news on Monday that he will no longer serve as the streamer’s film chief. He was referring to Bela Bajaria, the company’s chief content officer who was let go last week as Netflix seeks to reshape much of its screen content business.
It was a fitting anecdote given that Dan Lin — the Harvard Business School grad turned studio executive turned movie producer behind hits like The Lego Movie and $1 billion grosser Aladdin who is known for his calculating and budget-conscious acumen — was hired to be Dan Lin. And he was Dan Lin all the way until Netflix made the decision that it no longer wanted a Dan Lin-esque figure running its movie division.
So what did it mean to be Dan Lin at Netflix?
When Bajaria hired him in the spring of 2024, his mandate was to rein in spending (no more $300 million Russo brothers movies) and improve the quality of the slate.
This didn’t always make him popular; it’s easier to be the person greenlighting big budgets and big paydays than be the one telling agents and filmmakers “no.” There are a multitude of reports of filmmakers, from Ben Affleck to Greta Gerwig, having issues with the executives’ communication style.
“Dan was very frank in feedback. Blunt, even,” says one Netflix insider. “Some talent was used to being handled with velvet gloves.”
Reports of soured talent spread like wildfire in the weeks leading up to Lin’s exit, but one filmmaker, David Fincher, is not one of them, despite the news he would not continue at Netflix when his deal expires next year. “David leaving had zero to do with Dan,” says one insider on the Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth director. Fincher renewed his deal with Netflix three years ago with a plan of not extending.
Sources say that for in spite of the talk of chafing talent, he was able to secure big names to work with Netflix. He landed projects that are still unannounced with Keanu Reeves, Ben Stiller and the famously streaming-averse Jason Statham, according to sources. And filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, who earned Oscar nominations for his adaptation of Frankenstein and won a best animated film Oscar for his take on Pinocchio, re-upped his film deal while under Lin.
As for the movies, Lin’s slate was just starting to get in front of audiences this year. Alan Ritchson’s sci-fi movie War Machine and the splashy book adaptation Remarkably Bright Creatures were two of Lin’s early greenlights, and came out in February and May, respectively. Both generated huge viewership numbers. When he arrived in 2024, he worked to fill holes in the 2025 slate, greenlighting Nonas, Happy Gilmore 2, My Oxford Year, The Thursday Murder Club, and House of Dynamite — and buying Oscar contender Train Dreams.
Lin’s next move is unclear. He spent years building Rideback, a company he divested from when he took the Netflix job and is not return to. It’s more likely he will try to build something new. Last year, it was announced that he co-founded an AI animation tech startup.
Speaking to those in the industry on Monday after Lin’s ouster, multiple sources noted that no one executive can be blamed if Netflix’s film slate does not appeal to audiences in a meaningful way. Instead, this fault lies with the core of Netflix’s business model. “Streaming movies just don’t work,” says one top lit manager who has done business with the streamer. “Nothing breaks through.”
Co-CEO Ted Sarandos has long championed Netflix’s streaming-based business model. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, a splashy streaming feature film was a novelty. During the pandemic, it became a necessity. “It helps with the press cycle a little bit,” said Sarandos last year, on the upside of releasing movies into theaters.
But as theatrical has bounced back — buoyed by big spectacle from name brand filmmakers and younger audiences interested in in-person experiences — Sarandos’ stream-or-die mentality is now seen as increasingly outdated. (When Netflix was previously set to acquire Warner Bros., Sarandos said he would keep Warners movies in theaters. “My pushback has been mostly in the fact of the long, exclusive windows, which we don’t really think are that consumer friendly,” he noted.)
During his tenure, Lin pushed Sarandos to embrace theatrical further. While it was the co-CEO’s decision, Lin helped secure full theatrical releases for the upcoming Kpop: Demon Hunters sequel, a move that hasn’t been officially announced. Now, after years of agreeing only to the minimum time required in theaters for awards contention and the occasional tax rebate, Netflix will now expand its theatrical footprint.
La Bola Negra, Netflix’s top Oscar contender that was acquired this year out of the Cannes Film Festival, is receiving the streamer’s most robust theatrical release to date. Netflix even reported theatrical earnings on the film. It just so happened to be good news, with the Spanish-language movie earning $277,500 across just four screens. In February, Greta Gerwig‘s Narnia movie will receive a 49-day exclusive theatrical run, with Netflix handling North American distribution and Sony Pictures Entertainment handling international.
And a theatrical component could likely be the lynchpin for Netflix’s next film chief (or chiefs). Multiple sources say that recently ousted Warner Bros. film co-head Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca are having conversations with the streamer, with one critical deciding factor being if Netflix will commit to more theatrical releases.
Abdy and De Luca would come in with a deep bench of filmmaker relationships, but the kind of filmmakers that require theatrical releases. Given Sarandos’ desire for a best picture win — the key prize that has eluded the streamer its push into movies, and the one that De Luca and Abdy picked up last year with Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another — capitulation is seen as a real possibility.
It will ultimately be up to Peter Rice, Netflix’s new chief content officer, to find the executives to help him right the ship, even if it is unclear what direction the ship is meant to be headed. It’s a familiar position for those at the top of the org charts during this moment of ever-shifting CEOs, holding companies and remits. Uncertainty, it seems, is the only true constant.
As Lin put it in his Monday afternoon memo: “There’s a lot of uncertainty in this business right now, maybe more so than ever. But uncertainty isn’t what brought you here to Netflix, and it definitely isn’t why you stay.”
—Aaron Couch contributed to this report.