Longtime Warner Bros. executive Dan Lin has been tapped to replace Scott Stuber as head of film for Netflix, according to a new report. Lin, a producer on the Sherlock Holmes, It, and Lego Movie franchise, will step into his new role on April 1, departing Rideback, the production company he co-founded. Lin, who served as a producer on The Last Airbender live-action reboot, had actually been one of the candidates to run Warner’s DC Studios, but ultimately excused himself from consideration after deciding that he didn’t want to leave Rideback at the time. Of course, Netflix is a lot less troubled than Warner Bros. Discovery, making the position, at least in theory, a lot more stable.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, Rideback’s Jonathan Eirich and Michael LoFaso will take over as co-CEOs after Lin leaves. The two will presumably also run Rideback Rise, the company’s associated nonprofit.
Prior to The Last Airbender, Lin had worked with Netflix on Death Note and The Two Popes. He has long been a champion of genre film, citing his work on George Miller’s aborted Justice League Mortal with changing the direction of his career.
“It’s the reason I started my company,” Lin said in 2022. “I thought that was the ultimate project. I was a fanboy – for me to work with all those characters together on a team… that’s my dream.”
When the DC deal was on the table, Lin reportedly wanted to keep Rideback going with WBD taking on an equity stake, but the terms got “bogged down.” It doesn’t sound like Netflix will be buying into Rideback either, but a year and change is a lot of time to figure out a succession plan.
According to chief content officer Ted Sarandos, not much will change right away in terms of how Netflix handles their original content in the wake of Stuber’s departure. Speaking during a recent investor call, Netflix executives said that the plan is to continue focusing on quality and creating a steady stream of content. The company’s “mix” — originals, recent licensed movies, and older movies known as catalog titles — has been Netflix’s magic bullet since they first started making original shows and movies. At one point, Netflix had one of the deepest catalogs of any video store in the country — although now that most remaining stores are the very best, and Netflix has abandoned disc rentals, that’s no longer true.
