Among the nearly 1,000 Netflix employees laid off on Wednesday were television executives Lisa Lang McMullen, James Oh, Carolina Garcia and Andrew McQuinn.
McMullen was most recently director of all deals and series at Netflix, Oh was director of drama series, Garcia and McQuinn both held the title of director of original series.
Also fired were Jason Pan, head of original series, Aaron Davidson, head of adult animated comedy, and Dan Evans, head of original animation.
Job cuts at Netflix affected approximately 6% of employees, primarily in the product, technical, legal and HR teams. This is the streamer’s biggest layoff since 2022. The film division was also hit by the reorganization, with the departure of VP of film Doug Belgrad and director Sheroum Kim.
Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced the downsizing via email this morning.
“Our mission – to entertain the world – is ambitious, and to achieve it, we must be disciplined about prioritizing our people and resources,” the co-CEOs wrote in the memo, obtained by THR. “Our business is strong and growing, and we remain on track to achieve our full-year guidance. We will continue to invest aggressively in high-impact areas to improve our service and drive further growth and innovation. To do this, we must make targeted choices across the business so we can continue to meet the expectations of our members, partners, employees and investors.”
“We know changes like this are difficult, but let’s stay focused. This is one of the most dynamic periods in entertainment history – and it’s a perfectly suited time for a company like ours, built at the intersection of technology and entertainment,” Sarandos and Peters continued. “Now it’s up to us to step up and live in the moment together, like we always do.”
Netflix will reveal its third quarter results next week.
At Bloomberg’s recent Screentime event, Sarandos acknowledged that Netflix is ”not growing as fast as I would like.” The streaming leader’s commitment is particularly lacking — Netflix hopes that recent successes like Below And East of Eden can increase its useful life.
Deadline was the first to report the news of the layoffs of television directors and managers.
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