It’s time for a little housekeeping here at The Ankler. The tectonic plates have been shifting once again in recent weeks with big personnel shifts at Warners and Disney, but it feels like merely a harbinger of things to come.
Is there an exec in Hollywood that you could put more than even money odds that they will be in their job four years from now? Even two years from now? By end of the year?
Will their jobs even exist? Will their companies exist?
Everything is on the table. What’s more, what with the recent rounds, the ranks are overflowing with contenders for the big jobs and would-be jobs. The list swells with likely CEOs of companies that haven’t even been invented yet.
With all the shuffling and maneuvering, it seemed like time to evaluate how the institutional reckonings around town will shape the executive musical chairs coming down the pike. Part II of this series (coming next week) will get to the meat of the players, contenders and names to watch.
But first, the studios. Ready to play?
Netflix
The Big Question: Is a turnaround coming?
Thus far the Netflix crash has been greeted with a smattering of low-to-mid level layoffs, persistent rumors about belt-tightening across the empire, but not even a little change in the highest ranks (although rumors flare about one Ankling said to be moments, just moments, away.)
Just post-stock crash there were murmurs that the Reed and Ted show was about to break up and the Keeper test would fall on the studio’s top man, but that threat seems to have faded along with the consumer awareness of Spiderhead.
So they would seem to be in mid-reboot, except at the top there’s no reboot to behold. In fact, just yesterday, TV boss Bela Bajaria insisted, “We’re not doing some radical shift in our business. We’re not merging. We’re not just having a big transitional phase.”
This has been a sneak preview of today’s edition of The Ankler, the industry’s secret newsletter. To read the rest of this issue, subscribe today for just $17 a month and don’t miss out on who’s in the hot seat next!
New on The Ankler
The Wakeup: Check out The Ankler’s new morning round up of Hollywood and media news.
Martini Shot – Pitch Face: Rob Long’s hidden messages when selling in the conference room.
Oh the Places You’ll Go: Thoughts on Streaming’s Class of 2022.
On-Screen Guns Target of A-List Petition: Industry movers and shakers call for more mindful guidelines in film and TV.
A Drag Queen Race Already Won: Texas’s efforts to outlaw minors at shows misses the point that Hollywood already mainstreamed drag.
Pod: Gone in 7 Minutes: Disney’s “gang fight,” Dana Walden’s contract negotiations and a town “outraged” by the Peter Rice firing.
Production Companies and the Bubbles About to Burst? ESG asks if Netflix was the canary in the coal mine.
