Key Points
- Netflix has hired Instacart executive Dani Dudeck as Chief Communications Officer, reporting to co-CEO Ted Sarandos starting in January.
- Dudeck succeeds former spokesperson Rachel Whetstone and brings experience from Instacart, Edelman, Zynga and News Corp.
- Her appointment comes as Netflix navigates a potentially transformative period tied to its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery.
Netflix has poached a senior executive from Instacart to serve as its top communications officer as the company moves forward with its $83 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD).
Starting in January, Dani Dudeck will serve in the role of Chief Communications Officer, succeeding prior corporate spokesperson Rachel Whetstone, who left earlier this year. Dudeck will report to Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, the company affirmed in a statement.
“Dani Dudeck has worked with some of the world’s fastest-growing companies over the last two decades,” Sarandos said on Monday. “Dani is known for building high-performing global teams and shaping narratives that meaningfully influence culture, business, and stakeholder trust, and we are excited to be welcoming her to Netflix.”
Dudeck joined Instacart in 2018, ascending to the role of Chief Corporate Affairs Officer, where she oversaw internal and external communications for the delivery brand as well as regulatory and government affairs.
Prior to her time at Instacart, Dudeck worked in similar roles at Edelman, gaming company Zynga and News Corporation, among other firms.
In a statement on Monday, Dudeck said she was proud of her time at Instacart, overseeing “some of its most-defining moments from the early founder years” and helping it “become a household name and essential service” during the coronavirus pandemic.
She praised prior and current executives at Instacart for helping the company scale over the past several years, “helping more families get the goods and groceries they rely on to feed their households, and delivered a successful public market debut for our employees.”
“Through every reinvention, I’ve been fueled by the trust, resilience, and ingenuity of the people who make this company so special,” she wrote.
But the opportunity at Netflix was too good to pass up.
“Storytelling shapes culture, and few companies understand that better than Netflix,” Dudeck affirmed. “Becoming part of a company whose creativity and cultural impact reach hundreds of millions of people globally is a humbling honor.”
She also said her new position at Netflix made her “the coolest mom on Earth for bringing my kids closer to their KPop Demon Hunter, CrunchLabs, Is It Cake?, and Gabby’s Dollhouse obsessions.”
“I’m energized for what’s ahead and grateful to join one of the hardest-working, most inventive teams in entertainment, that 28 years in, is still redefining what’s possible,” she wrote.
Dudeck will sign on to Netflix at what is sure to be one of the most-transformative moments in the company’s history — perhaps even larger than when Netflix decided to ditch its DVD-by-Mail business and go all-in on streaming.
Stock Price
The company’s $82.7 billion bid to acquire WBD marks a rare occasion of Netflix participating as a buyer in the media and entertainment space — and it won’t be without its challenges, including a hostile takeover bid for WBD launched by Paramount earlier this month and numerous regulatory hurdles from the Trump administration.
Early Monday morning, Netflix submitted a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that was meant to assuage concerns from some movie theater groups who feel the company will move away from theatrical releases for WBD titles in favor of distributing them on Netflix and HBO Max if the deal is complete.
Such a move would likely create a snowball effect in Hollywood where major studios stop offering their prized feature-length films to theaters first, and instead relegate them to apps like Paramount Plus (Paramount Pictures), Peacock (Universal Pictures) and Disney Plus (Walt Disney Studios) — something that is already starting to happen, albeit at a smaller scale.
“We haven’t prioritized theatrical in the past because that wasn’t our business at Netflix,” Sarandos and fellow co-CEO Greg Peters wrote in the letter. “When this deal closes, we will be in that business.”
Sarandos and Peters said they had no intention of upending WBD’s successful model of distributing films to theaters first, though they didn’t say the same for its own slate of original titles under the Netflix brand.
Netflix’s offer is largely for WBD’s intellectual property, film studio business and its HBO brand, and is contingent upon the company moving forward with a prior plan to spin out its cable networks business into a new company called Discovery Communications.
Paramount, which believes its offer is superior, wants to acquire the entirety of WBD, including its cable networks. The company’s CEO, David Ellison, said he wants to wind down HBO Max as a standalone service and integrate WBD content into Paramount Plus, which has fewer subscribers.
Comcast submitted a competing bid during an open solicitation period last month, but executives later affirmed their offers were inferior to what Paramount and Netflix put on the table.
