Indie Studio Mubi Restructures Leadership; Around A Dozen Staff Exiting Company

EXCLUSIVE: Indie studio Mubi is restructuring its content leadership and is also shedding around a dozen staff, Deadline can reveal.

The Substance and Die My Love distributor’s longtime Chief Content Officer Jason Ropell is moving out of the day to day and going forward will work with founder Efe Cakarel on company strategy. We understand Mubi won’t be hiring a replacement CCO and Ropell’s new title is still being configured.

In a move announced internally last week, Arianna Bocco, the longtime IFC exec who joined the company at the start of the year, will now be overseeing all acquisitions and distribution, including those teams.

Michael Weber, the longtime Match Factory boss, will become Mubi’s head of global production and the Match Factory team will be fully integrated into Mubi. TMF will continue to sell in territories where Mubi doesn’t have direct distribution as well as pick up third party titles from key filmmakers. The company’s Berlin and Cologne offices will remain in place and key sales execs are said to be staying within the new structure.

Programming and licensing at Mubi will newly be led by Chiara Maranon and Uriel Kuzniecki while publishing will continue to be led Danny Kasman.

Mubi, which has scaled aggressively after significant investment, has a headcount of around 400 across 14 international and U.S. offices. As with most ambitious companies that scale fast, there is often a counterpunch around the corner. The London head quartered-company is facing the same challenging headwinds that have seen thousands of jobs shed at larger studios and other indies. Against this backdrop, and with the new structure in the offing, we understand staff were recently given an option to bow out if they didn’t want to continue down the road with Mubi in its new configuration. Around a dozen staff have recently left with exit packages. Some of the roles will be rehired, we are told by sources.

Among the most senior unannounced departures is Kevin Chan, the company’s Co-Head of Acquisitions. Chan led on acquisitions with Cate Kane, who as previously reported this week, is leaving to take on a commissioning role at Film4. We understand going forward Mubi will likely be looking for one exec to take on that previously combined role.

A spokesperson for the company told us: “Mubi is making some proactive changes to its content operations to better meet the company’s needs going forward. Mubi’s mission and vision are not changing at all, but the new configuration will allow the company to make faster decisions in a competitive market.” 

The company has garnered significant backing, of a scale most arthouse players can only dream of, but with most sectors of the business being buffeted by rapid change, that investment also brings a different type of pressure and likely hastened the need to focus on future-proofing strategies.

Mubi was the toast of Cannes this year. With studio specialty divisions almost a relic of the past and international cinema soaring on the awards stage, the voracious arthouse mini-studio cut a dash on the Croisette, where it was feted in multiple trade profiles and could puff its chest out thanks to an injection of $100M from investor Sequoia Capital. Mubi had three films in Competition and another in Un Certain Regard and the production slate has ramped up quickly. Cannes dealmaking included the splashiest acquisition of the entire festival with an eye-watering $24M paid for Jennifer Lawrence drama Die My Love.

Things haven’t been quite so rosy since, however. Die My Love took only $5.5M domestic ($11M global) and only got one nomination at the Globes; movies like The History Of Sound and The Mastermind didn’t take off domestically; and the company became bogged down in a draining PR controversy over the Sequoia investment, with high-profile filmmakers among those to criticize the ethics of the funding given Sequoia’s ties to an Israeli military tech company.

Whether the company is still in the market for splashes of the Die My Love scale, we’ll have to see. But with major studio consolidation on the horizon and limited buyers for arthouse movies, the indie sector will benefit from players like Mubi remaining active and ambitious.