Ryan Murphy Leaving Netflix For Disney
Ryan Murphy looks to be heading back to Disney.
Murphy is set to leave Netflix at the end of his five-year overall deal, which was understood to be worth around $300M. Deadline has confirmed that he’s in talks with Disney, although no deal is yet signed.
The move will reunite him with Dana Walden, who is now Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment.
The move is not a huge surprise as many around town have been openly discussing him returning to work with Walden – he was previously under an overall deal at 20th when Walden was there – before moving to the streamer in 2018.
After a slow start at Netflix, with shows such as Hollywood, Murphy has been responsible for some of its biggest recent hits including Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and The Watcher. Prior to Hollywood, he had made series such as Ratched and The Politician for the streamer, which won them on the open market.
The revelation of talks with Disney come during the middle of a writers strike. Murphy has been silent on the WGA/AMPTP standoff and a number of his shows, including American Horror Story featuring Kim Kardashian, have remained in production during the strike.
If he does, in fact, return to Disney, it will also reunite him with FX boss John Landgraf, who greenlit his series such as American Horror Story and its spinoffs as well as Feud and Pose.
Since the game-changing success of Nip/Tuck, which helped put FX on the original series map, Murphy had been closely associated with FX, which is now owned by Disney.
He still has projects with Netflix, including a second season of Monster, which has become one of Netflix’s most-watched series, that will tell the story of Lyle and Erik Menendez, and a second season of The Watcher.
At FX, he has Feud: Capote’s Women and American Sports Story, which will tell the story of NFL superstar Aaron Hernandez.
Murphy struck his five-year overall deal with Netflix in 2018, starting in July.
Bloomberg broke the news.
Source: Deadline
