Netflix restructures film group as it scales back movie output

NETFLIX is restructuring its film group to make fewer movies each year and to centralise decision-making, the company said on Thursday (Mar 31).

It will combine units that produce small- and mid-sized pictures, a change that will result in a handful of layoffs and the departure of two of its most experienced executives.

Lisa Nishimura, who led Netflix into stand-up comedy and original documentaries, will leave after more than 15 years at the company. She is presently responsible for documentaries and smaller-budget films. 

Ian Bricke, a vice-president at the film group, is also leaving after more than a decade. He helped make The Kissing Booth movie franchise and worked with filmmakers such as Nicole Holofcener and the Duplass brothers.

Film chief Scott Stuber is attempting to scale back the company’s output so he can ensure that more of its titles are of high quality. The streaming service released more original movies than any other company in Hollywood recently, producing more than 50 projects a year. 

A handful of those earned Oscars – including All Quiet on the Western Front, which won Best International Film this year; others, such as Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, have been viewed by tens of millions of people. But many of them come and go with little fanfare.

Netflix increased its output in part because it knew that other studios would stop licensing as many titles as they focused on their own streaming services. The company added staff to boost production, creating multiple divisions responsible for movies at different price points. The independent film group makes movies with a smaller budget (typically US$30 million or less); another group makes films in the mid-budget range (around U$30 million to US$80 million). Yet another unit makes bigger-budget films.

Those different divisions operated with relative autonomy, in keeping with Netflix’s culture of decentralised decision-making. Executives often had the power to agree to make a movie without checking with their superiors. Stuber is now centralising more of the decisions, and is trying to get more of his executives to collaborate. 

He said of the two departing executives: “We thank them both for their contributions to making us a world-class film studio, and wish them the best for the future.” He praised Nishimura “as a champion for inclusion on- and off-screen”, noting that she joined Netflix when it was still primarily a DVD-by-mail service. He thanked Bricke for his work on an emerging film-maker initiative.

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The job cuts are much smaller in scale than the ones Netflix instituted a year ago. The company, which ended 2022 with about 12,800 employees, eliminated hundreds of positions last year to reduce costs after its subscriber growth slowed. 

Netflix’s cuts presaged a year of job reductions at many of its peers in film and TV, which have been cutting costs in response to the loss of traditional TV viewers and pressure from investors to improve the profitability of streaming. Disney began the process of eliminating 7,000 jobs this week.

As finding new customers has become more challenging, Netflix has introduced a lower-priced streaming plan with advertising to boost revenue and attract budget-conscious viewers. It ended 2022 with almost 231 million paying customers. It is also rolling out a programme to force people who use someone else’s Netflix account to pay for the service.

The company is scheduled to report first-quarter results on Apr 18. BLOOMBERG