Netflix is changing its film programming strategy, moving away from big-name-led, high-budget action movies towards a more varied approach that appeals to all of the streamer’s 260 million subscribers, according to The New York Times.
It’s a major switch for the streaming company, considering the dominance high-octane thrillers backed by big-name casts have achieved on Netflix in recent years, with movies like Chris Hemsworth’s Extraction, and Ryan Reynolds’s Red Notice and The Adam Project landing spots among Netflix’s top 10 most watched films of all time.
But under the company’s new film chief, Dan Lin, Netflix plans to eschew many of these expensive titles to increase the quality and range of its movies.
As detailed by the Times, Lin has already done “serious restructuring” to the film department, organizing it by genre rather than budget level to prioritize making more movies across all budgets.
Another tenet of Lin’s new approach is to change the process of talent compensation, slashing the enormous up-front deals given to actors like Mark Wahlberg, who was paid a whopping $30 million by Netflix in 2020 to star in Spenser Confidential.
The big production budget outlays often have failed to produce significant viewership. In December, for example, filmmaker Zack Snyder’s Rebel Moon: Part One fell flat despite a budget as big as $166 million.
And such is the current shift at Netflix: away from high-budget, talent-heavy blockbusters and towards a more austere, selective approach to film projects.
In fact, Netflix’s film slate has been a concern for management for some time, according to the Times, which reported that in a meeting with Lin’s predecessor, Scott Stuber, Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria told the company’s film department that “quality needed to improve.”
Lin began the process by trimming the movie department, laying off 15 of its 150 staff members and emphasizing the streamer’s own producers. It expects those in-house producers to become “more aggressive” and develop their own content, rather than waiting to bring in big deals.
Netflix did not return a request for comment to Next TV on Monday.
