Ankler Agenda

How do you solve a problem like Netflix Film, and who is best positioned to figure it out?

“As currently constructed, it’s an impossible job,” Richard Rushfield tells Elaine Low and Sean McNulty on this week’s pod. The problem? Netflix wants to churn out 30-plus movies a year, deliver the next KPop Demon Hunters, compete for Oscars and somehow make films that actually become cultural events. And it’s increasingly failing at that last part. Netflix, Richard warns, is “starting to look like the Walmart of streaming” — and losing market share in the process.

With Dan “Lego” Lin out after just two years, Rice faces a fundamental choice: Does Netflix need more crowd-pleasing programmers (even if the mission is now steaks, not gourmet cheeseburgers), bigger theatrical swings or the kind of movies that restore its reputation as Hollywood’s most exciting disruptor? Or, frankly, all of the above?

Two years ago — with prescience and accuracy that would make the prediction markets blush — Richard said Lin should get the top job. The suggestion was so unexpected that even Netflix itself hadn’t thought of the prolific producer until Richard’s column. Now Richard’s back with his crystal ball. Obvious contenders include former Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, along with veteran Emma Watts. But Richard has a much more provocative proposal about who ultimately gets the job.

Take a listen to find out Richard’s surprise picks — and whether he’s about to call Hollywood’s biggest hiring decision right for a second time.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To hear Ted Sarandos tell it, things are going great at Netflix.

“Our business and our business flywheel are working,” the co-CEO said on this week’s earnings call — a week after laying off a thousand employees, and unceremoniously firing content chief Bela Bajaria, whose sudden perp-walk out of the company’s HQ has shaken even an industry accustomed to volatility.

So while revenue was up, engagement was up and churn was down, strange things are afoot at Netflix — and it’s now legacy studio operator Peter Rice‘s job to sort things out; to turn some of Netflix’s “doubles and triples,” in Sarandos’ words, into home runs.

Is Netflix simply pivoting to a new growth era, or is the underlying streaming game going the way of basic cable did 10 years ago — disrupted by a player taking audience, in this case, YouTube.

Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey tackle that question and more this week — reading between the lines of the earnings call. What challenges does Rice face (local-language production, anyone)? How does the gutting of women and people of color from the top of the Hollywood food chain impact what stories are told? And are gourmet cheeseburgers still the right business model for Netflix?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Steve Hilton has been talking with David Ellison, Ted Sarandos and Trump Hollywood ambassador Jon Voight about how to bring production back to California. And the Republican candidate for governor has a big idea: blow past the state’s existing film tax incentives with an uncapped credit that could reach 40 percent, covering everything from stars’ salaries to animation and postproduction.

“We cannot let it collapse,” Hilton tells Elaine Low in a wide-ranging interview about Hollywood’s economic crisis, his conversations with industry power players and why he believes California is driving businesses away. He also calls the state’s now-settled legal challenge to the Paramount-Warner merger a “politically motivated stunt” and defends his campaign’s use of AI-generated political ads — even as he insists he’s on the side of Hollywood’s artists and creators.

But Hilton isn’t the only candidate promising a Hollywood rescue. With Election Day nearing, Matt Hamilton of L.A. Material joins to break down the increasingly bitter Los Angeles mayoral race between Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, the lingering Spencer Pratt effect, and Democrat Xavier Becerra‘s proposal to force streamers to reveal more of their closely guarded viewing data. The question for an industry desperate for help: Who’s offering an actual plan — and who’s just campaigning?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

David Ellison has an ambitious pitch for Hollywood: Skydance will spend more on content than Netflix or Disney, crank out roughly 190 series and 30 movies a year, find at least $6 billion in savings and pay down its mountain of debt. All while keeping the creative community happy. How, exactly, is all of that supposed to work when even Wall Street doesn’t see it?

Ellison and new co-CEO Ynon Kreiz opened the Paramount lot to reporters Tuesday to sell their vision for the new lockup — and to explain why the old one needed blowing up. “The businesses didn’t disrupt themselves over a decade ago,” Ellison said of Paramount and Warners (just please sunset the moniker “WarnerMount,” he implored). “They didn’t transform, and they held on to the past for too long.” Now he’s betting the combo can create the scale to compete without sacrificing investment. Kreiz’s formulation: “Content is a spend, but you can also see it as an investment.”

Is it magical thinking?

Elaine Low and Sean McNulty break down what this means in practice: where the promised $6 billion in efficiencies might come from, whether three TV studios and a thicket of film labels can really coexist, and how many jobs could disappear once the machinery underneath consolidates (with the help of AI). Sean’s useful metaphor for the new Skydance: a giant food court — lots of storefronts, but one kitchen in back — and how that reveals where the first wave of layoffs will start.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The new Paramount is taking shape fast. On the eve of the Warner Bros. deal concluding, David Ellison is bringing in fresh blood — and bloodletting. Former Mattel chief Ynon Kreiz boards as the surprise co-CEO, charged with day-to-day management and integration (read: layoffs). And after months of heated rivalry between Cindy Holland and Casey Bloys over who would control the combined company’s original-content future, we have an answer: it’s Casey at the bat.

Elaine Low, Sean McNulty and Natalie Jarvey break down what those choices reveal about Ellison’s coming structure at the combined company, soaked in debt, and who could be vulnerable next. Then: hundreds of layoffs hit Disney as Josh D’Amaro prepares to take over, with ominous promises of more technology (read: AI?) raising a bigger question: Is this only the beginning?
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices