Netflix, the streaming television disrupter which has given television executives a headache for the past half-dozen years, is officially in the film business.
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Though Netflix has for some time pumped out a slate of films, the streaming platform's content head Ted Sarandos has now hired a film industry heavyweight, Scott Stuber, to head its film division.
Stuber is a former Universal Pictures executive and drove franchises for that studio, notably The Fast and the Furious and the Bourne films.
His other producer credits include A Million Ways to Die in the West, Ted and Ted 2 and Patriots Day.
He was also recently flagged as a likely next head of Paramount Picture's film division.
In securing Stuber to head its film expansion, Netflix is essentially casting itself as a traditional Hollywood studio, the equal of 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, Universal, Disney or Sony.
Such perceptions are significant for Netflix, much in the same way they aggressively courted television's best content creators to deliberately undermine the notion that channels such as HBO, Showtime and FX were the principal sources of high-quality television.
By expanding more aggressively into film, Netflix is disrupting both the traditional distribution model and the exhibition industry, that is, cinema chains who acquire films for theatrical release.
Sarandos today described Stuber as someone who is "well known and respected in the film industry."
Stuber's "innovative work and strong talent relationships should help accelerate the Netflix original film initiative as we enter into a new phase of big global productions with some of the greatest directors, actors and writers in the film business," Sarandos said.
Stuber's appointment comes ahead of an expansion of Netflix's film slate.
Upcoming Netflix films include the battlefield comedy War Machine, starring Brad Pitt and directed by David Mich??d, and the fantasy thriller Bright, from director David Ayer and starring Will Smith and Joel Edgerton.
Netflix also acquired Deidra & Laney Rob a Train, one of the loud buzz-making films at the Sundance Film Festival; it stars Ashleigh Murray and Rachel Crow as two sisters who embark on a train robbery.
Other feature projects in development include Martin Scorsese's gangster drama The Irishman, Mute from David Bowie's writer-director son Duncan Jones, a Robert Redford-Jane Fonda two hander titled Our Souls at Night and First They Killed My Father, directed by Angelina Jolie and based on Loung Ung's memoir First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers.
