Peter Friedlander, the former head of scripted U.S. television at Netflix, has joined Amazon MGM Studios as head of global television.
Having left Netflix in August after nearly 14 years at the streamer, Friedlander serves as the successor to Vernon Sanders, who departed as the TV boss earlier in September.
News of Friedlander’s hire came in a memo sent to staff by Mike Hopkins, head of Amazon MGM Studios and Amazon Prime Video.
Read Hopkins’ full memo below.
Team,
Please join me in welcoming Peter Friedlander, who joins Amazon MGM Studios as our new head of global TV. In this role, Peter will oversee our original TV portfolio in the US, in addition to our global tentpole titles, MGM Television and MGM Alternative. Peter joins us from Netflix, where he led their scripted series division for the past 4+ years, having joined that company initially in 2011. His resume at Netflix speaks for itself, as his tenure brought global audiences shows like Wednesday, Bridgerton, Monster, Ozark, Emily in Paris, The Queen’s Gambit, Stranger Things, The Night Agent, 3 Body Problem, Black Mirror and more. He joined Netflix as the first dedicated original series employee, helping to shepherd their first generation of shows, including House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black, among others.
Prior to Netflix, Peter was an executive at Tom Hanks’ and Gary Goetzman’s Playtone, where he produced the Emmy-nominated drama series Big Love and served as a creative executive on many of the company’s feature films. Peter began his career working on film sets, including Road To Perdition and Austin Powers In Goldmember.
I can’t wait for Peter to ramp up and meet all the teams, and I know he’s equally ready to get started on Day 1, which will be Monday, October 6. Please join me in congratulating Peter on his new role and in welcoming him to Amazon.
-Mike
More to come…
