Senior TV and film execs on their way out as Netflix cuts 1,000 jobs

Adolescence

Lisa Lang McMullen, Carolina Garcia and James Oh are among the US-based TV executives leaving Netflix as the streaming giant cuts around 1,000 positions.

While most of the lay-offs, which equate to around 6% of the company, are across the product, legal, tech and human resources departments, news of cuts in the programming teams began to filter through on Wednesday.

McMullen was the director of overall deals and had joined Netflix five years ago as director of drama series; Garcia, who had been with the streamer for more than a decade, was the director of original series; and Oh served as director of drama series. Andrew McQuinn, who was a director of original series, is also among those whose roles were cut.

There were also several high-profile departures on the film side, including VP of film Doug Belgrad and director of independent films Sheroum Kim.

The round of lay-offs appears to be in reaction to a languishing share price, which has fallen more than 40% since summer 2025, and slowness to grow viewer engagement, which grew 2% in the first half of 2026 compared with the year before.

Over the past 18 months, the streamer has also struggled to find new global hits that have reached the heights of Bridgerton, Squid Game, Adolescence and Wednesday.

While the streamer is cutting jobs, there is no indication at this stage that it intends to reduce its content spend. Execs have repeatedly stated that spending across originals and licensed titles will be US$20bn in 2026, its biggest ever, and that the goal is to grow that in the years ahead.

Netflix has made no major lay-offs since 2022, when it cut around 450 staff in two main rounds of cuts.

“Our mission – to entertain the world – is ambitious, and delivering on it requires us to be disciplined about where we prioritise our people and resources,” said co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos in an email to employees on Wednesday, adding that “decisions like these are never easy, and we don’t take them lightly.”