Netflix Comedy Executive Andy Weil Jumps to Amazon MGM Studios
Andy Weil, a senior comedy executive at Netflix for more than a decade, is leaving the streamer to become Head of Comedy TV at Amazon MGM Studios. His first day is 14 September, according to an exclusive report by Deadline.
The move reunites Weil with Peter Friedlander, who runs Amazon MGM Studios' scripted television operation. Friedlander had launched the search for a comedy head roughly a month earlier. In a memo to staff, he confirmed Weil would report directly to him.
Friedlander has been building his leadership team with people he knew from his own Netflix days, where he served as Vice President of genre drama before joining Amazon. He has already brought in Blair Fetter to lead Worldbuilding & Genre Series, Jenn Levy as Head of Nonfiction and Mandy Schaffer as Head of Business Affairs. Weil is the first of these hires to move straight from a current Netflix role. The others had already departed the streamer before Friedlander recruited them.
Friedlander's scripted structure splits commissioning into five areas. Drama, Comedy and Young Adult each report to him, alongside the previously established Worldbuilding & Genre Series under Fetter and Animation led by Melissa Wolfe. Amazon veteran Kara Smith was named Head of Drama in June. The Young Adult role remains unfilled.
Weil arrives with a deep comedy résumé. He joined Netflix in June 2015 as Director of Original Series, hired from Universal Television, where he had shepherded Brooklyn Nine-Nine and worked on The Mindy Project and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. At Netflix he served as the No. 2 comedy executive, first under Jane Wiseman and then under Tracey Pakosta, and was promoted to VP in February 2020. When Wiseman exited in October 2020, Weil ran the comedy department on an interim basis until Pakosta arrived a month later.
The Netflix comedy slate Weil oversaw is long: Master of None, BoJack Horseman, Russian Doll, The Kominsky Method, Nobody Wants This, The Four Seasons, A Man on the Inside, On My Block, The Upshaws, Tires, The Vince Staples Show and the upcoming A Hundred Percent and I Suck at Girls, among others. He was also the executive on the sci-fi anthology Black Mirror.
Before Universal Television, Weil was head of scripted television for BermanBraun. NBCUniversal brought him in as VP Comedy in late 2011, when he was 27.
For Amazon, the hire addresses a gap. Prime Video has built strong positions in drama and young adult programming with hits like Reacher, Fallout, The Summer I Turned Pretty and Off Campus. Its comedy slate has been thinner — a modest roster that includes Overcompensating, Elle, the Emmy-nominated anthology Jury Duty and the recent breakout hourlong comedy-drama Ride or Die. Weil's job will be to scale that up.
Friedlander and Weil worked together at Netflix during a 2020 restructuring that saw Friedlander named to head a new Spectacle/Event TV division while Weil was tapped as interim lead of comedy, as The Hollywood Reporter reported at the time. Six years later, they are colleagues again.
