Netflix Film Chief Dan Lin Is Out, and the Fincher and Narnia Questions Get Louder
Netflix's film chief is out. Dan Lin, who took over the streamer's movie division from Scott Stuber in 2024, left on Monday, October 19, according to reports from Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, the Los Angeles Times and TheWrap. Netflix hasn't given a reason, and it didn't respond to the LA Times' request for comment.
What we know
Lin's exit is the latest piece of a Netflix leadership purge. Chief content officer Bela Bajaria left the week before, and Peter Rice, the veteran Disney and Fox television executive, was brought in as her replacement. Film VP Doug Belgrad was also let go as Netflix cut roughly 6% of its staff, about 1,000 people. No successor for Lin has been named. Per the LA Times, Rice will oversee the film team until one is.
Ted Sarandos, Netflix's co-CEO, wrote in a staff note that he saw a chance to take the slate to the "next level." Lin thanked his bosses and called leading the team a "great privilege," per Dark Horizons.
The two films everyone is looking at
Lin was hired to deliver "fewer, better and bigger movies." He can point to The Rip, with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, and the animated hit KPop Demon Hunters. But the story around him had already turned.
Last week, Page Six reported that David Fincher chose to leave his Netflix deal after clashing with Lin, and that Fincher wanted expensive reshoots on his Brad Pitt film Cliff Booth that Netflix only partly approved. That film is due in theaters in November. Separately, the trade newsletter The InSneider reported friction between Lin and Greta Gerwig over Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, including heavy notes on early cuts and a "buffer" placed between them. Those are single-outlet reports that Netflix hasn't confirmed, so treat them as reported, not settled. Gerwig's film is still set for February 12, 2027, as we covered when the trailer dropped.
Why this matters
Think of a streaming film chief as the person who decides which directors get a blank check and which don't. Lin's biggest bets were the kind of prestige, big-screen movies that are meant to prove Netflix can compete with studios in cinemas. Now the person who greenlit them is gone just before two of them arrive. If Cliff Booth and Narnia land, the new regime inherits a win. If they don't, the pressure on Rice only grows.
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It is also worth noticing who isn't being named as a replacement. TheWrap's Sharon Waxman floated Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, recently out at Warner Bros. Pictures, as possibilities, but that is speculation, not a report of talks. Netflix's next earnings call, expected within days, may say more.
Featured image (Ted Sarandos): UKinUSA / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Stock photo: wong zihoo / Unsplash.