Netflix Ousted Its Content Chief and Film Chief in the Same Week. Earnings Are Today.

Netflix spent the week before its third-quarter earnings taking its own leadership apart. On Wednesday, October 14, the streamer said it would cut roughly 6% of its workforce, about 1,000 jobs, its biggest layoff since 2022. A day later, chief content officer Bela Bajaria was out and former Disney executive Peter Rice was named to replace her. Then, at the start of the weekend, film chief Dan Lin was dismissed after almost three years, according to Variety's sources. Netflix reports Q3 results after the close today, and the story it tells investors now has to explain all three moves.

A Company That "Largely Eschewed Layoffs"

The scale of the cut matters less than who did it. The Hollywood Reporter notes that Netflix has long had a culture that largely avoided company-wide layoffs, preferring individual teams to make changes as needed; last week's cuts were its first in four years. According to Benzinga, the jobs went mainly in product, technology, legal and human resources rather than in the content teams that make the shows.

The cuts still reached the creative side. THR lists film VP Doug Belgrad and TV executives Lisa Lang McMullen, James Oh, Carolina Garcia and Andrew McQuinn among those who left in recent days. Variety reports that Lin watched his right hand, Belgrad, and the film group's indie head, Sheroum Kim, go before he was let go himself.

Tech workers have seen this pattern all year. Meta cut 8,000 jobs to fund its AI spending and Oracle's headcount fell by 21,000. Netflix's reasoning is different. It isn't redirecting money to GPUs. It is trying to get its growth back.

Bajaria Out, Peter Rice In

Bajaria joined Netflix in 2016 and became chief content officer in January 2023. Her tenure included Bridgerton, Squid Game and the push into live programming through multi-year deals with WWE and the NFL. Netflix and Bajaria did not tell Benzinga why she was leaving.

Her replacement is a known quantity in Hollywood. Rice spent years at 20th Century Fox, moved to Disney with the acquisition and rose to run Disney's entertainment business before Bob Chapek pushed him out in 2022. He most recently oversaw content for the LA28 Olympics. Rice starts on October 26 and will lead Netflix's global content group across scripted and unscripted series, film and live events. Co-CEO Ted Sarandos called him "one of the most effective at-scale operators in the entertainment industry."

In a staff memo quoted by THR, Sarandos acknowledged the timing: "I know this is a big change in a year that has already had its share."

Dan Lin's Exit Leaves Film Without a Chief

Lin came to Netflix in 2024 from Rideback, the production company behind the Lego films and the It adaptations, to replace Scott Stuber. In a June interview with The New York Times, he said he had greenlit or acquired 88 movies for the streamer.

Variety says Lin was let go at the start of the weekend and was set to address his teams on Monday. Netflix had no immediate comment, and no successor has been named. Variety reports that former Warner Bros. film heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy have been widely speculated to be in talks with Netflix, which is unconfirmed. Variety also frames the shake-up as coming after months of headlines about engagement problems and a flat stock, and after Netflix's failed bid for Warner Bros.

What Investors Will Look for Tonight

The numbers Wall Street expects are modest. Analysts forecast earnings of about $0.82 a share on roughly $12.88 billion in revenue, according to Benzinga Pro, roughly in line with Netflix's own guidance. The stock is the bigger problem. Benzinga put it down 20.2% this year and 39.7% over the past 12 months as of last Thursday, and options traders were pricing in a move of about 9.6% on the report.

Engagement is the worry. Benzinga cites July data showing YouTube with 14.2% of US TV viewing against under 8% for Netflix. Sarandos said as much at Bloomberg's Screentime summit on September 30: "overall, we're not growing as fast as I want us to, and we're working on making that move faster."

That gives tonight's call three questions to answer. How much will the layoffs save, and will the savings go into content? What does Rice change when he starts on October 26? And who runs film? A clean beat won't settle those. Netflix's executives will have to argue that a week of cuts was a plan and not a panic, in a market that has stopped taking big-company stories on trust, as CoreWeave's worst week on the Nasdaq showed.

Sources

• Variety: Dan Lin Out as Netflix Film Chief
• The Hollywood Reporter: Bela Bajaria Out at Netflix, Peter Rice Replaces Her as CCO
• Benzinga: Netflix Taps Peter Rice to Replace Content Chief Bela Bajaria
• GuruFocus via Yahoo Finance: Netflix Turns to Disney Veteran Peter Rice as Growth Doubts Mount
• TipRanks: Netflix Will Report Q3 Earnings on October 20
• MarketBeat: Netflix Q3 2026 Earnings Date