Reed Hastings has stepped down as co-CEO of Netflix and will segue into a position as Executive Chairman. Filling the void will be Greg Peters, who has been promoted from COO to co-CEO alongside Ted Sarandos.
Additionally, Scott Stuber has been named to Chairman of Netflix Film, while Bela Bajaria has been upped from Head of Global TV to Chief Content Officer at Netflix.
“I want to thank Reed for his visionary leadership, mentorship, and friendship over the last 20 years. We’ve all learned so much from his intellectual rigor, honesty, and willingness to take big bets — and we look forward to working with him for many more years to come,” Sarandos said in a statement. “Since Reed started to delegate management to us, Greg and I have built a strong operating model based on our shared values and like-minded approach to growth. I am so excited to start this new chapter with Greg as co-CEO.”
“Bela and Scott are outstanding creative executives with proven track records at Netflix,” added Sarandos. “In 2022, we premiered many of our most popular series and films in Netflix history, including Wednesday, Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Purple Hearts, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, The Adam Project, and Harry & Meghan — a testament to their leadership and creativity. I couldn’t be more excited to work alongside them as we seek to delight audiences for years to come.”
Though he first joined Netflix in 2009 as its International Development Officer, Peters was named COO in July 2020. That promotion came three years after he was named Chief Product Officer at Netflix, where he made a name for himself steering the company from physical DVDs into streaming, and more recently, into advertising.
It’s unclear whom Stuber and Bajaria will report to, but they are both seasoned executives who have earned the respect of the entire industry, and I expect that both will be around for the long haul.
Meanwhile, Netflix also announced that it added 7.66 million subscribers during Q4 of last year, outperforming its own forecast of 4.5 million new subs.
It was Netflix’s first subscriber report since the streamer introduced a cheaper, ad-supported tier in early November that cost just $6.99 a month compared to $15.49, which is the cost of a standard plan. In an effort to reach advertisers, Netflix will be participating in TV’s Upfronts week in New York this May. The company is also making more of an effort to play down its overall subscriber numbers, and refocus on investors on revenue.
Netflix is coming off a strong year that included Season 4 of Stranger Things, the Jeffrey Dahmer series Monster, Tim Burton‘s Addams Family series Wednesday, and Rian Johnson‘s murder mystery Glass Onion. The streamer recently unveiled its 2023 slate, which is led by sequels to Extraction and Murder Mystery, and also features David Fincher‘s The Killer starring Michael Fassbender, as well as the upcoming comedy You People starring Jonah Hill, Eddie Murphy, and Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Though the feature slate includes far fewer films than last year — 49 compared to 86 — Netflix is still expected to maintain its $17 billion content spend for the year.
