It started with dinner.
Peter Rice and Ynon Kreiz met for a meal in late September, days before Kreiz shocked the industry by leaving the CEO post at Mattel to become co-CEO of Skydance with David Ellison.
The report of the Kreiz-Rice meeting appeared in the New York Post’s Page Six after Kreiz’s role at Skydance was announced. This sparked speculation that he was recruiting Rice for a significant role at the expanded studio. It turns out that Kreiz had been trying to persuade Rice to serve on the Barbie House board.
Rice, however, was not intended to advise on matters relating to the Uno and Matchbox cars. The former head of Fox Searchlight and Fox Networks Group — who joined Disney in 2019 as chief television officer only to be unceremoniously fired under the Chapek regime — returned to one of the most powerful jobs in town: Netflix’s chief content officer.
Media coverage of Kreiz’s courtship with Rice is one of the incentives that pushed Netflix to make a hire that will have ripple effects across its vast film and television operations. Bela Bajaria’s ouster from the role Rice now occupies was complicated and angered many inside and outside of Netflix.
“We don’t live in Hollywood right now. We live in Silicon Valley,” one top agent said, citing the general mood of the creative community. The abrupt treatment of a leader of Bajaria’s stature is a sign that no one is safe from scrutiny and no one should ever count on a smooth exit.
LISTEN to Variety’s Matt Donnelly, Cynthia Littleton and Michael Schneider explain Netflix’s shakeup
“It seems more like a tech approach than a studio approach to letting someone go. It’s shameful, it sucks and it adds to the feeling that we’re all working by the rules of Silicon Valley,” the agent said.
The source pointed out the irony of Bajaria receiving the ax just two weeks after the executive she replaced at Netflix – Cindy Holland – was also hastily ousted from her new role at Skydance. Holland’s role was sacrificed to make way for Casey Bloys, the HBO chief who is taking over all streaming now that the Warner Bros. merger. Discovery is over.
The explosive shakeup in Netflix leadership, coupled with the signals that insiders are reading in the layoffs that Netflix implemented this week, has sparked new speculation that the streaming giant is returning in search of a major studio or other major content assets. NBCUniversal is a logical target, given that the company will be spun off from Comcast next year and would therefore be a much smaller and more manageable acquisition than Comcast as a whole.
The move to Rice also raises the question of whether Netflix will remain as aggressive in its local language content strategy as it had been under Bajaria. Rice’s reference in his first memo to Netflix employees to the need to deliver more hits for the “UCAN” market (the wacky term Netflix uses for the United States and Canada) did not go unnoticed.
Bajaria, according to multiple sources, learned the harsh reality of her fate Wednesday night when she cornered Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos at the streamer’s Hollywood offices, just before a screening at a private residence in Los Angeles for the Season 3 premiere of the comedy “Nobody Wants This.” (Notably, neither Sarandos nor Bajaria are featured in any of the publicity photos shared during the event.)
Bajaria asked Sarandos directly if there was any truth to the rumors that were gaining popularity – and Sarandos, who was reportedly initially going to break the news on Monday, told him at that point.
Rumors about Bajaria’s fate have multiplied in recent months. While the saga of the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger. As Discovery continued, there was widespread speculation that HBO chief Bloys would jump ship for a major role at Netflix or to launch a well-funded prestige label for the streamer. But once Bloys was confirmed as Skydance’s new streaming boss, speculation about Bajaria died down. On Monday, Bajaria was on stage at the Mipcom content conference in Cannes, where she accepted the Vanguard Award for her contribution to the global market, presented by Variety and Mipcom.
But even as major players in the European content industry gathered to hear Bajaria speak, discussions about his future resumed in Hollywood this week. It turned out to be a perfect storm of events, with Netflix preparing for its largest-ever layoffs and the release of its third-quarter earnings report on October 20. The layoffs, representing 6% of the company’s workforce, or approximately 1,000 positions, were implemented Tuesday and Wednesday. That meant Netflix employees were already on edge when the shock of Rice’s news hit just after lunchtime in Los Angeles on Thursday.
Meanwhile, just two weeks ago, Rice was telling friends he had no interest in becoming an executive again — which is a sign that Sarandos acted quickly once he learned Rice was available.
Bajaria is said to have received an outpouring of support from his extensive network of contacts in the creative community, at home and abroad. Multiple sources say the executive bluntly told her friends she was in shock, in keeping with her reputation for frankness. Bajaria declined to comment.
The microscope now turns to Bajaria’s two main vertical lieutenants: Dan Lin in the film and Jinny Howe in the original TV series.
Lin has played a steady role in Netflix’s film operations for two and a half years, ushered in to end the lavish spending of the streamer’s formative Scott Stuber era. Cutting budgets came at an emotional price, however, and Lin was forced to ensure talent delivered a quality product without a widely perceived blank check signed by Sarandos.
In addition to making cheaper films, Lin has also backed some high-profile acquisitions (“Emilia Pérez” and Netflix’s current Most Promising Actor Oscar nominee “La Bola Negra”). Still, numerous reports suggest Lin will leave the company as Rice takes over. This couldn’t be a more sensitive moment, as Netflix will launch Greta Gerwig’s highly anticipated “Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew” with a full theatrical release in February. As Bajaria took over, the rumor mill immediately offered up Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy – the ousted heads of Warner Bros. Pictures – as potential replacements (which actually started a month ago, as Paramount and WBD finally found a way to combine).
With Rice likely to kick off his tenure focusing on the film side, according to inside sources, Howe, who is responsible for scripting in the US and Canada, appears to be secure in his role. With rumors in Hollywood that Netflix has struggled recently to produce another megahit in the vein of “Stranger Things” or “Bridgerton,” Howe, who took over in August 2025, has a heavy slate on his plate and is just starting to see some of his own development come to fruition.
This includes Meryl Streep in “The Corrections,” Adam Driver and Michael Fassbender in “Rabbit, Rabbit,” Martin Scorsese’s “The Roman” and the live-action/CGI “Scooby-Doo: Origins.”
“They want her to stay,” a source said. “If she left, it would be a disaster for them.”
Meanwhile, given Rice’s experience, some also wondered whether Sarandos had just hired someone who could possibly be a candidate to replace him — whether the stock continues to suffer and whether the company sees a need to make more changes.
The week indeed offered more drama than anything Netflix will bring to its service this year.
(Pictured: Peter Rice, Bela Bajaria, Dan Lin and Jinny Howe)
Gn entert
