Netflix Is Done Coddling Hollywood

When Dan Lin, the chair of Netflix's film division, read the script for a survival thriller set in the remote wilderness of Australia, he thought it was obvious who should play the lead role: Charlize Theron. "Charlize is one of one," Lin said. The movie, "Apex," would feature white-water rafting, venomous snakes, characters plummeting to their deaths from cliffs. "We wanted to make it in a way that the action actually felt real -- that you actually felt like you were in the Australian outback," Lin said. "She was the only one that could do it."

Lin and I were sitting in a sleek conference room at Netflix's Sunset Boulevard headquarters, where he oversees the industry's most prolific film studio. We were talking about his approach to making movies, and he had volunteered this story.

For "Apex," Lin consulted with Kira Goldberg, one of his deputies. "Kira and I strategized about how do we get Charlize to do it," he said. "How do we know that the actor that we have is game to make that kind of movie? And so, unlike a traditional Hollywood process where you take someone to The Grill, some fancy restaurant, we took Charlize to the cafeteria here at Netflix."

"That was the strategy," I said, a little confused. "Why?"

"The strategy is: Is she game?" Lin said. "Is she willing to roll up her sleeves and get into it with us?"

I thought it unlikely that Theron, who spent months in the Namib Desert shooting "Mad Max: Fury Road," would consider the Netflix salad bar a hardship. Lin continued, as if he had not said anything strange: "Netflix is such a big company. My goal is to make a big company feel small."

On that score, he's succeeded. Not long ago, the film group was run by Scott Stuber, a former vice chair at Universal, whose charge was to convince Hollywood that Netflix was committed to making every kind of movie imaginable, from extravagant action titles to prestige Oscarbait. Charming and affable in the traditional studio chief way, Stuber lured Martin Scorsese, Guillermo del Toro and other elite directors with expansive budgets and creative freedom. Talent saw Stuber as one of the good guys: He fought with his boss, co-CEO Ted Sarandos, to give movies theatrical runs and keep a piece of their fading glamour.

Lin was hired in April 2024 to replace Stuber and change all that. The streaming wars had ended, and Netflix had won. Hollywood was in the middle of a major consolidation; prestige was on the downward slide. Netflix no longer needed Stuber's largesse and studio-system pedigree to attract talent -- especially when much cheaper podcasts and live programming could keep users on the service with as much success as movies, if not more.

Lin, who is 53, spent the first part of his career earning respect across Hollywood as an executive and producer behind a long list of successful films, including "The Lego Movie" and "Sherlock Holmes." But his two years atop Netflix's film division have made it clear that he is more of an implementer and budget master than a regal statesman. He doesn't fawn over talent. He doesn't have a soft touch when telling filmmakers they have to compromise on their vision. He doesn't even report to Sarandos: He's under Bela Bajaria, the chief content officer, who comes from the world of television.

At a time when anybody of any wattage is lucky to get a movie made anywhere, it doesn't matter if an invitation to the corporate cafeteria is slightly daft. Lin got Theron. "Apex" premiered on Netflix in April as its No. 1 film, amassing more than 100 million views in its first 30 days.

From the moment he arrived in Hollywood, Lin has been known for being more cerebral about his projects than passionate. After graduating from Phillips Exeter Academy, Wharton and Harvard Business School, he went to Warner Bros. as an executive in 1999. He was quickly clocked as a rising star and spent the next nine years shepherding films like "The Departed" to the screen.

"I unabashedly say I love the guy," said his mentor, Alan Horn, who ran Warner Bros. at the time. "We were immediately impressed by him. He's smart. He's classy. He was clearly on a path to greater things."

Lin left to start his own production companies, which generated a run of high-profile projects including "Aladdin," "Godzilla vs. Kong," "It" and "The Two Popes." He was considered for a job overseeing the DC Comics film empire in 2022, helping to elevate his profile as a major executive when Netflix went looking for someone to succeed Stuber in 2024.

After joining the streamer, Lin recalled some advice Horn had once given him: Always return phone calls, and always tell the truth. In Hollywood, where artifice is standard and egos are fragile, most operators understand that truth is best delivered with finesse. But Lin takes a straighter approach. "If you talk to anyone in the business, I'm probably the most responsive, most approachable studio chairman there is in town," he said. "I make my own phone calls. I don't go through my assistant. You can reach me directly, and you'll know where I stand."

Directors and actors accustomed to Stuber's suavity have found Lin's style to be a radical change. He's often described as officious and blunt, and it's easy to hear stories around town about his awkward bedside manner. It's harder to get anyone to tell those stories on the record. Lin directs a staff numbering in the hundreds (including an entire animation studio), and they still green-light more movies than any other studio by far.

In person, Lin comes off as earnest and eager, more wide-eyed than sleek, like an avid movie lover who can't believe he has been given so much power. Programming for an audience of 1 billion viewers, he has green-lighted 88 movies in his two years at Netflix. That's down from Stuber's pace, but still a staggering level. Lin's peers at other studios are authorizing perhaps 12 to 15 movies a year.

Lin's instructions at Netflix are to spend less money on fewer, better movies. "The goal was to have really great movies on Netflix and have consistency in quality, and he has delivered that," Bajaria, the streamer's chief content officer, said. What "better" and "quality" mean can be hard to define, but Lin sees an opportunity in certain types of projects that Hollywood's legacy studios are leaving behind.

"There are movies that I grew up watching and I love that people aren't making anymore," he said. He wants Netflix to make more comedies, more romantic comedies, more book adaptations -- more of the films that used to be the bread and butter of the medium.

Lin cited "People We Meet on Vacation" as an example. The rom-com, based on a bestselling novel by Emily Henry and starring the newcomers Emily Bader and Tom Blyth, generated more than 17 million views over its opening weekend and gave Netflix new homegrown stars. Bader is scheduled to appear in two upcoming movies on the platform.

There have also been plenty of critical duds, including "Ladies First," which reviewers excoriated as "tiresomely un-fun," "laughably earnest" and "shot in that odd Netflix house style that somehow looks simultaneously expensive and cheap."

Netflix is bullish on its upcoming slate, particularly "Here Comes the Flood," starring Denzel Washington and Robert Pattinson and directed by Fernando Meirelles ("City of God"), and an untitled project, known unofficially as "The Adventures of Cliff Booth," starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Fincher from a script by Quentin Tarantino. Biggest of all, perhaps, could be Greta Gerwig's film "Narnia: The Magician's Nephew." It is expected to premiere in 2027 with a full theatrical release, something Netflix has given to no other movie.

Lin emphasized that "Narnia" was an exception and insisted that the company's perspective on movie theaters had not changed. "There is a group of filmmakers who still want theatrical. Those are filmmakers that we've accepted we just won't work with," he said, deploying what's become his trademark bluntness.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Copyright 2026 The New York Times Company

This story was originally published June 6, 2026 at 11:42 AM.