Jennifer Aniston may be earning millions from The Morning Show, but her Hollywood movie career has stalled of late – not helped by the exit of her close friend Scott Stuber from Netflix – giving her cause for anxiety over her future payday prospects, an insider exclusively reveals to In Touch.
“Jen still has the enviable position of huge creative freedom and a huge salary to go along with it on The Morning Show,” the source says. “That’s a series Jen and the AppleTV bosses see as potentially running for many more years thanks to its huge cast and no shortage of ripped-from-the-headlines story ideas.”
The series, which has aired for three seasons and picked up for a fourth, stars Jennifer, 55, alongside her new bestie Reese Witherspoon.
Though, our insider reveals that, despite the success of The Morning Show, “Jen’s movie career, such as it was, has been dealt a huge blow with the shakeup that’s happening at Netflix, and there are no easy answers for what this means for Jen and her team.”
“Scott [Stuber] was her most important benefactor at the company, and Jen’s team are right to panic,” the source explains. “The two Murder Mystery movies were hugely lucrative for Jen, big hits with viewers and certainly played a part in the romantic comedy revival that is taking over Hollywood right now. But, if you know Scott Stuber, you know that those two movies are exactly his kind of project and they don’t really happen without somebody with his taste and confidence involved.”
Despite the movies’ success, Netflix has decided that budget-friendly, mid-range content is the future and have shaken up their producers to affect the change.
“Scott’s replacement, Dan Lin, is a successful producer best known for the Lego Movie films, but his tastes are a world apart from Jen’s, to say the least,” the source continues. “Jen’s real recourse at the moment is to let her frequent costar Adam Sandler go over Dan Lin’s head, work his magic with Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos and get the Murder Mystery franchise back on track as soon as possible.”
The Murder Mystery movies made Jen’s costar, Adam Sandler, the highest paid actor in Hollywood in 2023, despite critics dubbing the two movies a “throwaway series.”
“Adam has a personal relationship with Ted beyond anything Jen and her team have with him. But the danger in the short term is that Netflix absolutely wants to make fewer, but better reviewed, movies going forward and the Murder Mystery movies are popular with audiences, not with critics,” the insider says.
“Yes, Jen needs to adapt to the changing times, but why not keep a good thing going?”
“Scott’s sudden exit has created a real environment of uncertainty around the movie side of Jen’s career at the moment, and she desperately wants to keep making feature films, and comedies at that, while telling darker and more dramatic stories with The Morning Show,” the insider tells.
However, due to the suits at Netflix ruffling feathers down the production line, it’s “unfortunately, suddenly become incredibly difficult to do both.”
