Jennifer Salke will step down from her function as head of Amazon MGM Studios, the corporate mentioned Thursday in an inner electronic mail seen by the Occasions.
Salke gained’t be going far. She’ll be beginning a brand new manufacturing entity that has a first-look cope with Amazon MGM Studios for each movie and TV, in response to the memo from Mike Hopkins, Salke’s boss.
“As I’ve been contemplating my subsequent chapter, I’ve all the time been looking for that second the place I used to be constructive that our work had arrange Amazon MGM Studios for much more success in the long run,” Salke mentioned within the electronic mail despatched to workers. “After I have a look at the groups we’ve put in place, our superb leaders, and the unimaginable slate of movies and reveals we’ve obtained within the pipeline, I noticed now could be that second.”
Salke joined Amazon Studios in 2018 from NBC Leisure. On the time, Amazon was seeking to make strikes into Hollywood and broaden past its e-commerce roots.
Its main productions for Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service embody “The Rings of Energy,” “Fallout” and “Reacher.” Latest motion pictures included the Oscar finest picture-nominated “Nickel Boys” and the Anne Hathaway romantic dramedy “The Concept of You.”
A tv government for many of her profession, she was met with skepticism from the movie business when she took over. Early in her tenure, the studio made sequence of main impartial movie acquisitions on the that ended up flopping in theaters.
Later movie efforts below the Amazon banner included a “Borat” sequel and a “Highway Home” remake.
Amazon acquired MGM Studios in 2022 for $8.5 billion. It just lately secured a deal to from the Broccoli household after a prolonged deadlock over the way forward for the sequence.
The corporate doesn’t plan to fill Salke’s place. Movie head Courtenay Valenti and TV head Vernon Sanders will now report on to Hopkins, the top of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios. The studio will function as distinct movie and TV operations, the e-mail mentioned.
The choice displays a broader effort by Amazon to streamline management buildings.
Hopkins joined Amazon in 2020 to supervise Prime Video after serving as CEO of Hulu, then taking over a high-profile stint at Sony Footage Leisure, the place he ran the tv enterprise. He had beforehand served as a revered distribution government at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox.
When Hopkins moved to Amazon, he changed one among Jeff Bezos’ longest-serving executives and reported on to the billionaire. He has been busy constructing Amazon’s sports activities enterprise, which incorporates “Thursday Night time Soccer,” NASCAR, blended martial arts and New York Yankees baseball video games.
Salke’s authority has been diminished since Hopkins joined Amazon. She stayed closely concerned within the programming and helped construct “Reacher,” “The Boys” and the reboot of “Mr. & Mrs. Smith,” however Hopkins was the boss, a departure from earlier in Salke’s tenure when she was the highest studio government in Culver Metropolis.
In his electronic mail to workers, Hopkins was complimentary of Salke’s function on the firm, saying that “her imaginative and prescient, creativity and business relationships had been (and are) so obvious that I had little question our work collectively might be transformative not solely to Amazon, but additionally to the business as an entire.”
Salke’s resolution to depart was her selection, in response to an individual conversant in the matter however unauthorized to remark publicly.
Beneath her management, Salke cultivated offers with high-profile expertise.
“She is somebody who actually believes in making a house for expertise,” mentioned Latasha Gillespie, a former Amazon MGM Studios government who’s now an government board member for Getty Home Basis. “The rationale why expertise appreciated working with us is due to the message Jen permeated within the group about how you take care of individuals who you’re in enterprise with.”
However some business insiders mentioned Salke wasn’t as efficient at managing prices, pointing to overspending on expertise and bloated budgets for a few of Amazon’s sequence, together with the 2023 Joe and Anthony Russo-directed spy thriller “Citadel,” which The present didn’t register with U.S. audiences or critics.
