Amazon introduced this week that Jennifer Salke is stepping down as the top of Amazon MGM Studios — a transfer that would point out high-level dissatisfaction with the corporate’s streaming technique during the last few years.
To be transparent, Salke’s boss Mike Hopkins (the top of Amazon MGM Studios and High Video) praised her paintings in an e mail to workers and described her departure as one that permits the corporate to “flatten our management construction a little bit” — a ordinary theme in contemporary tech corporate layoffs.
In different phrases, Amazon does no longer intend to fill Salke’s function. As a substitute, the heads of its movie and TV studios record without delay to Hopkins.
However the reporting round Salke’s departure highlights Amazon’s streaming disappointments and demanding situations underneath her management. In the past an exec at NBC, Salke joined Amazon Studios in 2018, as the corporate was once taking a look to extend past seriously praised films and displays into extra mainstream hits.
The streamer has had its proportion of successes since then, together with “Reacher,” “Jack Ryan,” “Fallout,” and “The Boys.” It additionally made a gigantic guess on “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Energy,” a display whose premiere drew a document target audience for Amazon, however which has no longer confirmed to be the world-conquering phenomenon that you just’d hope for with a reported finances of greater than $1 billion.
After which there’s “Fortress,” an espionage display designed because the epicenter of a fictional universe of world spinoffs like “Fortress: Diana” and “Fortress: Honey Bunny.” Intensive reshoots reportedly became “Fortress” into the second one costliest display ever made (in the back of most effective “The Rings of Energy”), however its reception has been much more underwhelming. The Hollywood Reporter says the second one season has been behind schedule from fall 2025 to spring 2026, with additional spinoffs placed on grasp.
Amazon has additionally struggled to get any other James Bond movie into manufacturing, following its acquisition of MGM in 2022. Manufacturers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli (the offspring of longtime Bond manufacturer Albert “Cubby” Broccoli) maintained ingenious regulate of the franchise, and a Wall Boulevard Magazine record in December prompt that Barbara Broccoli was once specifically unsatisfied with Amazon — she was once it seems that pissed off in an early assembly when Salke referred to Bond as “content material,” and he or she was once even reported to explain the tech massive’s group as “idiots.”
Every other supply stated that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was once, in flip, so angered through the WSJ tale about Broccoli that he declared, “I don’t care what it takes, do away with her,” with the corporate due to this fact paying the Wilson and Broccoli to surrender regulate.
Salke’s title was once noticeably lacking from Amazon’s triumphant announcement of the Bond deal. She is going to, on the other hand, be beginning a brand new movie and TV manufacturing corporate with a first-look deal at Amazon.
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