Dan Lin has drawn a line around Netflix’s movie business: if a filmmaker still wants a theatrical release, the company will pass. The chairman of Netflix’s film division said Friday that the streamer has accepted it will not work with those directors, a blunt signal of how far the company is willing to go in shaping its film slate.
The comments landed in a New York Times profile published Friday, giving fresh shape to Lin’s role after he inherited the job from Scott Stuber. Lin said his job is different because of the size of Netflix’s output. He said he cannot impose his taste on the slate, but he can impose “a way of making movies” and “a way of how we want to work with filmmakers.”
That approach is meant to produce, in his words, “someone’s favorite movie in a specific genre” and to focus on “movies that I grew up watching and I love that people aren’t making anymore.” In practice, that means Netflix is looking for filmmakers who accept the company’s model, not ones who arrive with a demand for a theatrical run attached.
The line is not as simple as it sounds. Netflix has still made exceptions for some releases in theaters, including planned runs for the David Fincher and Brad Pitt sequel to “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and Greta Gerwig’s “Narnia” movie, even as Lin said there is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical and that those are the people Netflix has accepted it will not work with. That leaves the streamer signaling one standard publicly while preserving room for marquee exceptions when it suits the business.
The friction is already visible in the company’s dealings with Antoine Fuqua, where Netflix and the director have reached loggerheads over the Denzel Washington-led “Hannibal” biopic. Pre-production was suspended when the profile was published, and the film had been meant to start shooting later this summer. For filmmakers who want the big screen as part of the deal, Lin’s message is that Netflix is no longer trying to meet them halfway.
Lin’s pitch is not that Netflix will make fewer movies, but that it will make them differently and more selectively. That is the real cut line now: the company will keep chasing filmmakers who fit its process, and the next projects that move forward will show how many are willing to give up theatrical hopes to get there.
