LOS ANGELES — Amazon’s longtime head of film and television, Jennifer Salke, is stepping down from her position after seven years on the job, the company said Thursday, a sudden move that shakes up the top ranks of the streaming giant.

Salke will move into a producing deal at Amazon and will not be replaced, Mike Hopkins, head of Prime Video and Amazon MGM Studios, said in a staff memo. Instead, he added, he has decided to operate distinct film and television studios. Courtenay Valenti will continue to oversee film while Vernon Sanders will remain atop television.

“Jen has decided that her next challenge and chapter will be on the production side, with the aim of getting even closer to the global creative community,” Hopkins wrote.

The change shocked many employees inside the studio, including one group busy putting the finishing touches on Amazon’s presentation at the year’s biggest theater convention, CinemaCon, which will be held next week. Salke was set to introduce the company’s robust slate of coming films.

She was also featured this month at the SXSW Film & TV Festival, where she and Valenti were interviewed by Charles Rivkin, the head of the Motion Picture Association. At the event, Salke tried to dispel a rumor that constantly dogs executives at Amazon — that every creative decision is determined solely by data.

“Creative conviction really rules the day,” she said. “But you have to be right a lot.”

“Luckily,” she added, “we’ve had some good examples of it working, and so, people listen to the gut, and I guess we’ll be here as long as our gut leads us mostly in the right direction.”

Salke Has Significant Success at Amazon

Salke had some significant successes at Amazon, including the television series “Reacher,” which is atop the Nielsen streaming charts this week, and “Fallout,” which is shooting its second season.

According to Nielsen, Prime Video is the third-most-watched streaming service, accounting for a 3.5% of total U.S. television watching in February, below Netflix, at 8.2%, and Disney, at 4.8%.

In 2020, Salke took advantage of the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown of theaters and bought a string of high-profile films that the studios had shelved, including the sequel to “Borat,” and turned them into streaming hits and rekindled her commitment to films. Original productions such as “Air,” “Saltburn” and “Roadhouse” followed.

But her tenure was also marked by a string of expensive misses. On the television side, Salke spent $300 million on an ambitious six-episode globe-trotting spycraft series, “Citadel,” from brothers Joe and Anthony Russo and starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas. Although it ranks as one of the most expensive series ever made, it never connected with critics or audiences.

She also shepherded “The Lord of the Rings,” a property that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has shown great interest in. She spent $250 million on the rights alone. The first season of the television series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” cost $465 million to produce, yet it didn’t become a cultural touchstone in ways they had hoped. The company ran a second season in 2024 and announced a third last month.

On the film side, Salke began her tenure with an expensive buying spree at the Sundance Film Festival that produced poor box-office returns, prompting her to pull back on Amazon’s theatrical ambitions.

Amazon Botched James Bond Handoff

Most important, she botched the handoff of the James Bond property when Amazon bought MGM in 2022. For three years, Amazon was locked in a stalemate with the stewards of the franchise, Barbara Broccoli and her stepbrother, Michael Wilson.

The company reached a solution last month, with Broccoli and Wilson stepping back from the franchise and leaving it in Amazon’s hands. On Tuesday, the company announced that David Heyman (“Harry Potter”) and Amy Pascal (“Spider-Man”) would produce the next Bond film.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Nicole Sperling/Rozette Rago
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