Dan Lin, the chairman of Netflix’s film division, is opening up about his strategy for the company.
In a New York Times profile published Friday, Lin, who inherited the job after Scott Stuber, an executive known for courting triple-A talent and letting them making their dream projects at Netflix, with little budget oversight, laid out his vision for his slate.
He began by telling an odd anecdote about how when he was courting Charlize Theron for the recent survival thriller “Apex,” he ate with her at the Netflix cafeteria instead of going to a fancy restaurant. (The Netflix cafeteria, by the way, is very nice.)
Lin then explained his approach and how it might different from other, similar jobs in Hollywood.
“Because I have such a huge slate, my job is very different from other studio chairmen’s jobs,” Lin told the New York Times. “I can’t impose my taste on the slate. But I can impose a way of making movies. I can impose a way of how we want to work with filmmakers. I think people on the outside are pretty clear on what I’m going for: making someone’s favorite movie in a specific genre, focusing on variety and quality and making Netflix the best place for filmmakers to work.”
His way of making movies is doing something faster and cheaper (as Sperling says in the piece “spend less money on fewer, better movies”); the piece describes Lin’s thought process as “closer to the way TV shows are produced.” According to him, viewers don’t open the Netflix app and think, “I want to watch something expensively produced.” Instead, they just want a good story.
At the time that this article was published, Netflix has reached loggerheads with Antoine Fuqua over his Denzel Washington-led Hannibal biopic, which features a screenplay by John Logan and cinematography by the legendary Robert Richardson. (Somewhat puzzling is the fact that Fuqua and Logan are coming off of “Michael,” which has made more than $859 million so far.) Meant to start shooting later this summer, pre-production on the historical epic is currently suspended.
In the piece Lin said he considered himself a “servant leader,” with an objective to elevate those around him. “That’s my mantra,” he said. “That’s what I wake up thinking about every day. How do I create an environment where my filmmakers can succeed? How do I create an environment where my executives can succeed?”
Instead of reporting to Ted Sarandos, Lin reports to Bela Bajaria, the chief content officer, whose background is in television. (This too might inform his approach.)
“The goal was to have really great movies on Netflix and have consistency in quality, and he has delivered that,” Bajaria said.
Lin said that he is focusing on “movies that I grew up watching and I love that people aren’t making anymore,” like the R-rated blockbusters that have been extremely popular this year on the service, like “War Machine” and “The Rip” (which was recently singled out by Quentin Tarantino as one of his favorite films).
While Stuber pushed Sarandos about not allowing for theatrical exhibition of certain Netflix films, Lin is more bullish about simply not entertaining the idea. Sure, the David Fincher/Brad Pitt “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” sequel will get a special IMAX rollout at Thanksgiving and Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” movie will have a huge push next year but those are exceptions, not rules.
“There is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical. Those are filmmakers that we’ve accepted we just won’t work with,” Lin said.
Weirdly omitted from the story is any mention of Netflix’s robust animation slate. It’s “KPop Demon Hunters,” the original animated film produced with Sony Pictures Animation, that rests atop the most-watched Netflix original films list, by a considerable margin. (It is also the only animated feature outside of Pixar or Disney to win two Academy Awards.) And earlier this spring “Swapped,” starring Michael B. Jordan as a cute little critter, became a huge hit globally and has reached 100 million views faster than any other animated film in the platform’s history – including even “KPop Demon Hunters.”
And the rest of this year’s animated slate, overseen by Hannah Minghella, includes two highly anticipated originals – “Steps,” a fractured fairy tale centered on Cinderella’s evil stepsisters; and “Ray Gunn,” a sci-fi film noir from Brad Bird, the legendary director behind “The Iron Giant,” “The Incredibles” and “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol.”
Maybe he just forgot.
