The Ousted-Exec Fantasy Draft: Bajaria, Lin, Abdy & De Luca

Hollywood’s unemployment crisis has come for the C-suite.

A wave of ruthless cuts suddenly has produced an unusual surplus of top-tier talent: Bela Bajaria, Dan Lin, Cindy Holland, Jane Wiseman, Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca — an absolute murderers’ row now with plenty of time on their hands.

The problem? There are almost no jobs left big enough for them. 

“What we have is a bottleneck of very talented people,” says JLS Media headhunter Joanna Sucherman, who recently worked with ITV and Lionsgate on executive recruitment. 

Netflix is looking for a new film chief after Lin’s removal. But beyond that, are there any desirable top-level entertainment jobs actually available?

“I will put it this way: none that I know of,” Sucherman says.

Most of these executives are, of course, in tiny violin territory — wealthy enough that they don’t actually need another paycheck. What they want is something considerably harder to replace: power, influence and a perch.

“All of these people are of an age, even though they’ve done remarkably well economically, [where] they still have something to prove,” says one former network heavyweight. (The top execs who’ve just hit the market are all in their 50s or early 60s.)

But where do you go after you’ve already run the biggest entertainment companies in the world? And what happens when the industry that made you rich and powerful has eliminated most of the jobs you might actually want?

It’s a question, of course, with implications beyond Hollywood’s executive suites. Thousands of entertainment workers have already lost their jobs, and more cuts are looming. Most don’t have the luxury of multimillion-dollar exit packages or years to contemplate their next move. But they face a similar challenge: How do you build a future in an industry that may no longer have a place for the career you spent decades building?

In the best scenario, some of Hollywood’s displaced bosses could become its next job creators. Armed with industry relationships, access to capital as private equity ramps up, and relationships with trusted teams, they could launch new studios, production companies and entertainment ventures — potentially bringing some of their former colleagues along with them. The next opportunity for a laid-off development executive or producer might not come from a stumbling Hollywood giant, but from someone with drive who just lost their own corner office.

Though the former network exec says, “Some may say ‘Fuck it, I’m outta here,’” one indie studio exec is more optimistic.

“My great hope is they all start something and do something original and break the system,” says the indie exec. “The industry needs great material and great producers, so there will always be room for people who can do that.”

Perhaps the real winners of Hollywood’s exec bloodbath could be the international entertainment empires looking for American expertise, the technology companies eager to buy Hollywood credibility, or the private equity firms willing to bankroll the next generation of independent studios.

I spoke with eight industry insiders — including current and former studio and network chiefs and longtime agents — as well as Sucherman and a second top executive recruiter, to plot out the next moves and where 10 of Hollywood’s most sought-after free agents could land next. Here is the game of chess they see starting now.

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