Netflix execs have gotten the answer. Rather than setting out to make a bad show, they need to make good ones. 🙃

Netflix has fired their chief content officer Bela Bajaria. She will be replaced by Peter Rice, the former entertainment chairman at Disney. Netflix's film chief Dan Lin is also expected to be fired, subject to final decision by Peter Rice. (Source: puck.news/netflix-chief-cont…)

JUST IN: Man sentenced to 18 months in prison after generating hundreds of thousands of AI songs & using bots to stream them billions of times, outstreaming Taylor Swift & earning $8 million.

We are very excited to announce this next chapter! AEIP is a new banner dedicated to platforming emerging filmmakers in the indie space and we can’t wait to bring more films to life 🎥 variety.com/2026/film/news/b…

The guy who created Squid Game lost eight teeth from stress while making Netflix billions. His cut of the upside was zero dollars. That's the deal Netflix gives everyone. They pay around 110% of your budget upfront, take the IP, and keep every dollar your hit earns for the rest of time. Your show can be the biggest thing on the planet and you get the same check as if it flopped. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon just broke that deal. Their studio, Artists Equity, sold The Rip to Netflix in January with a clause Netflix had never accepted before. They took less money upfront in exchange for a bonus if the movie performed in its first 90 days. It pulled 112 million views in six weeks. The bonus hit. And they split it with the crew, so the grips and gaffers got checks because a streaming movie did numbers. Animals, the one Netflix is promoting here, is the next film under that structure. Affleck wrote the lead for Damon, lost him to Nolan's Odyssey, and just played the part himself rather than delay the shoot. When you own the studio, recasting the lead is a decision you make in the mirror. Netflix said yes because they had to. Every other studio is chasing franchises, so the handful of people who still make prestige adult dramas suddenly have pricing power. Affleck and Damon took the Silicon Valley trade, lower salary for equity, and ran it in the one industry that spent 15 years stripping equity out of talent deals. Hollywood lost its backend when streaming killed box office points. These two are quietly rebuilding it.

Another alarm bell went off Monday on the state of U.S.-based film and television production with the release of an extensive report commissioned by several of the Hollywood unions that illustrates what industry insiders have feared for some time: After a quarter century of rapid transformation and external disruptions, U.S. film and television production is on the brink deadline.com/2026/10/hollywo…

Warner Bros. and Paramount have officially merged to form Skydance Corporation. Bringing DC Studios, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, CNN, CBS, HBO and Paramount+ under one company.

360 deals came in and fixed everything [satire]. But any way you slice and dice it, the 90s were better. Bean counters weren’t deciding shit. That’s the lesson.

Not long ago, Warner Bros. was THE premiere studio in Hollywood. No. 1 at the box office, no. 1 on networks, and the no. 1 place talent wanted to work. On the last day of its independent existence, we made a video about what's been lost and what went wrong wsj.com/video/why-hollywoods…

Disney is planning a restructuring of its TV operation that’s expected to result in hundreds of layoffs and the consolidation of divisions. W/@benfritz wsj.com/business/media/disne… via @WSJ