For those who do not work in Hollywood, chances are you’ll not know Scott Stuber’s identify. For those who do work in motion pictures, you virtually actually have heard of him: He is the man in command of Netflix’s film division, and for years, Netflix’s film division made a lot of flicks, at a time when a number of studios have been shrinking.
Now that is altering, and now Stuber is not going to be at Netflix anymore: Netflix says he is leaving to start out his personal media firm.
That is actually huge information.
Within the subsequent few days, you are virtually sure to see some reporting teasing out what truly occurred right here. As a result of it will be very stunning if Stuber merely grew bored with holding one of the vital highly effective jobs in leisure and wished to hold up his personal shingle.
The truth that the announcement comes a day earlier than Netflix proclaims its This autumn earnings can also be odd. As is the truth that Netflix has not named a successor.
Within the meantime, it is price teasing out the arc of Stuber’s profession at Netflix:
Netflix began releasing its personal TV reveals in 2013 and had instant success with reveals like “Home of Playing cards” and “Orange is the New Black.” However its method to placing out its personal motion pictures was halting and scattershot, so the corporate employed Stuber, previously of Common, to ramp issues up.
Stuber did simply that, pushing out all the things from little indies to romcoms to huge blockbuster-style movies like Purple Discover, starring Ryan Reynolds, and 6 Underground, additionally starring Ryan Reynolds. Alongside the best way, he additionally courted Hollywood’s previous guard by giving the likes of Martin Scorcese big budgets to make Oscar-fare like “The Irishman.”
However when Netflix hit a stoop in 2022 and introduced that it had misplaced subscribers for the primary time in additional than a decade, the knives got here for Stuber, at the very least exterior the corporate.
When Hollywood of us wished to diagnose the issues on the firm, they typically fixated on Stuber’s seeming incapability to ship motion pictures that resonated. The argument went one thing like: Even when Purple Discover is Netflix’s hottest movie (which Netflix says is the case), are you able to keep in mind a single scene or the rest in regards to the film? Did you ever discuss to somebody who noticed Purple Discover and preferred it? Who’s signing up — or staying at — Netflix to observe Purple Discover?
And some months after that, when Stuber’s identify was floated as a attainable contender to run Amazon’s film enterprise, he did not appear lengthy for the place.
However Netflix’s brass insisted they have been pleased with Stuber and his work. As soon as, once I talked to a high Netflix govt in regards to the firm’s foray into videogames, they informed me that to make it work, they’d want to rent “a Scott Stuber” to assist them break into that enterprise, identical to that they had executed with the actual Stuber and the movie enterprise.
More moderen Stuber signposts: A yr in the past, when former Netflix CEO Reed Hastings stepped away and handed his job to longtime lieutenants Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, Stuber bought a titular promotion — however was additionally seemingly handed over: Bela Bajaria, who had been the equal of Stuber for Netflix’s TV enterprise, was made chief content material officer, that means she now oversaw Stuber’s enterprise.
And final fall, Netflix, which had been boasting about releasing motion pictures by the yard — in 2022, it put out one per week — now mentioned these days have been over. It was going to get … selective.
“We have been rising a brand new studio. We would solely been doing this for just a few years, and we have been up towards 100-year-old firms,” Stuber informed Selection to clarify the pivot. “So it’s important to ask your self, ‘What’s your corporation mannequin?’ And for some time, it was simply ensuring that we had sufficient. We wanted quantity.”
Now, Stuber mentioned, Netflix was going to chop its output in half so it may make issues higher issues.
And now Stuber’s gone. Requested for remark, a Netflix spokesperson equipped quotes from Stuber, Sarandos, and Bajaria saying good issues about one another.
It is attainable that none of this — the personnel strikes, the technique shift, the maybe-looking-around-at-other-gigs — had something to do with Stuber’s departure. However I can not wait to listen to extra about it.
