Netflix May Be Cutting Down on Pricey Movies As Its Head of Film Departs

Netflix endured quite a shake-up to start 2024 with their head of film Scott Stuber departing to start his own media company. Stuber had been in charge of the streamer’s features for seven years before finally opting for greener pastures, overseeing the many original projects developed for the platform as the company became a production powerhouse. With his absence, however, it now seems likely that Netflix will finally be shifting its film strategy. Specifically, there are signs that the Ted Sarandos-led ship plans to move away from big-budget features to instead focus more on television and “middle-of-the-road” content.

To some degree, this shift has been slowly occurring over the past few years. In 2018, Netflix released an absurd 90 original films, a number that has since dropped to as low as 49 last year. That’s still an overwhelming haul of features and, even with only 36 English-language films lined up for 2024 thus far, the streamer will far outpace the competition in terms of quantity. Quality, however, has been an issue, something Stuber acknowledged as expected when making so many films. While the company has released a few critical darlings like Glass Onion, The Irishman, and this year’s Leave the World Behind and Rustin, they come at the cost of some massively pricey critical flops like Lift and Rebel Moon: Part One – A Child of Fire.

Much to Stuber’s chagrin, Sarandos also rarely capitalized on the successes. The aforementioned Glass Onion earned $16 million in its limited week in theaters, but it likely could’ve raked in more had it been given a proper release. All the while, Apple is in the midst of an Oscar race thanks to Killers of the Flower Moon which just raked in $156.4 million USD at the box office. Netflix’s inability to promise filmmakers and actors a run in theaters has significantly handicapped them when trying to land some of the hottest projects available, occasionally even losing out to their direct rivals. While the company does have a few original franchises like Extraction, it’s become clear that film is not the company’s strength.

Netflix’s Real Advantage Lies in Reviving Old Television Shows

Where Netflix has found major success, however, is in rescuing shows from other networks or simply finding old shows and presenting them to a new audience. Two of the streamer’s biggest hits over the last few years have been You and Suits, the former of which was saved from Lifetime and has grown into a soon-to-be five-season epic with a massive following, while the latter found new life and a new Los Angeles-based spinoff when eight of its nine seasons were added to the platform. Executives in the industry question Netflix’s expensive approach to film when, as one anonymous film veteran told The Hollywood Reporter, “you have companies that are desperate for cash and license their product for pennies on the dollar.”

The company seems to understand the success of its television approach, as former TV chief Bela Bajaria is now Netflix’s chief content officer and will likely find a more conservative replacement for Stuber on the film side. Bajaria’s skills are focused around “middle-of-the-road programming” as one agent put it, an approach she’ll likely bring to features. That might not mean the death of high-budget original films altogether, but it’s clear that Netflix wants to optimize around its advantages rather than burn money. Television and licensing are what helped Netflix thrive in the first place, with both old shows and exciting originals like Orange Is the New Black. Considering the business side has been laser-focused on increasing profits with password-sharing crackdowns, ad-supported plans, and the death of the Basic subscription, it would make all the sense in the world to rein in film spending and focus the budget elsewhere.

Stay tuned here at Collider for more on Netflix’s film and television strategy as the company turns its gaze back toward television.