Amazon hires three Netflix dealmakers in TV business shake-up
Amazon has hired three long-serving Netflix executives to handle deals across its films and television shows.
Diana Bernstein, Chris Carter and Matt Rea have each spent more than a decade at Netflix, where they were most recently co-heads of business affairs for drama, according to Deadline. Business affairs is the team that structures and negotiates contracts with writers, producers, actors and studios. The trio will start at Amazon in the week of 26 October.
They arrive as Amazon reorganises that deal-making team around genres. Instead of one central group, dedicated business affairs leaders will now sit alongside each creative vertical, meaning the drama team, the comedy team and so on each get their own deals chief.
Bernstein becomes head of business affairs for drama, working with drama chief Kara Smith and her team. Carter takes business affairs for MGM and young adult, working with Lindsay Sloane and Carina Walker respectively. Rea becomes head of business affairs for world-building and comedy, working with Blair Fetter and Andy Weil respectively.
Several other roles are shifting in the same reshuffle. Dan Matusov moves to head of business affairs for animation, working with Melissa Wolfe. Julia Shapiro becomes head of business affairs for IP, meaning shows and films based on books, games and other existing properties, working with Lauren O'Connor. O'Connor will also lead work on first-look deals and overall pacts, the agreements that give a studio early access to a producer's ideas or tie a creator to one company for several years.
Ryan Singer stays on as head of business affairs for nonfiction, working with Jenn Levy and her team. Megan Shapiro continues to lead global television deal-making with outside studios, a group now called Originals Studio Partnerships.
The changes sit under Mandy Schaffer, who joined Amazon MGM Studios in May as head of business affairs for global TV, reporting to Peter Friedlander, head of global television. They follow the departure of Dan Scharf, the former head of global business operations, according to Deadline.
The deals shake-up mirrors changes on the creative side. Smith was named head of drama and Weil joined as head of comedy, after Amazon split oversight of drama, comedy and young adult into three separate jobs, according to earlier Deadline reporting. Levy, another former Netflix executive, was named head of unscripted and documentary television.
What makes this stand out is the scale. Crews can run into the hundreds on a single series. For viewers, none of this appears on screen. It decides who closes the contracts that let a show get ordered, staffed and finished.
