Cecil B. DeMille’s operations. Gone With the Wind was
filmed on the lot, as was Citizen Kane and Alfred Hitch-
cock’s Spellbound.
Outside those walls, Amazon Studios is on an ex-
pansion tear, building a sprawling new production
facility, with around 200,000 square feet and 1,000
employees (soon to be 3,000). Inside, the current de-
cor is from Restoration Hardware, centered around
a large square coffee table strewn with books. Salke’s
rattan handbag is spilled open on the floor where she’s
ditched it. Her shoes are Gucci platform espadrilles.
She looks relaxed in a summery terra-cotta dress, blond
hair spilling over her shoulders.
It was here that Salke successfully courted Jordan
Peele, the multihyphenate actor-comedian-director-
producer who, a few months after her arrival at the
studio, signed a first-look agreement for a television
series with Amazon and set to work on a series about
a group of Nazi hunters in the 1970s.
“Jen was a big part of the decision to go with Am-
azon. The shortest way I can say it is, She’s very cool,”
Peele says. “You find that ego plays a big negative part in
executive decisions in this industry. With Jen, it seems
like she’s secure and confident. That’s very reassuring,
because ego and fear lead to bad decisions.”
Salke exudes the calm assurance he’s referring to
when she explains, simply, “I’ve sort of settled into
my 55-year-old skin. I’m me—I show up as me every
single day.”
In the year and a half since she took over as studio
chief, Salke has signed an array of creative talent, in-
cluding writer-producer Lena Waithe, Nicole Kidman
(whose production office now occupies a small white
bungalow on Amazon’s fast-expanding campus), and
Barry Jenkins, the acclaimed filmmaker of Oscar-
winning Moonlight.
Last year, before she arrived, Amazon executives
returned from Sundance empty-handed. This year,
Salke’s team went on a shopping spree at the Utah film
festival, spending a reported $46 million on five films,
including Mindy Kaling’s workplace comedy Late
Night and the documentary One Child Nation, about
China’s one-child policy. Amazon also bought Honey
Boy, written by and starring Shia LaBeouf (the film
touches on the actor’s troubled relationship with his
alcoholic father), and The Report, a thriller featuring
Adam Driver, Annette Bening, and Jon Hamm.
Salke’s passion for obtaining projects that move her
is part of her appeal. When negotiations to buy Brittany
Runs a Marathon, a feel-good film about a woman who
loses weight by running, appeared to have arrived at
an impasse, she flew back to L.A. and texted a photo
of herself, despondent, lying on her floor with her
black Labradoodle rescue, Cooper. The texted photo
helped revive the talks, and Amazon nabbed the film’s
worldwide rights.hen Jennifer Salke moved into her office at Amazon Studios in March
2018, the film and television studio was in the midst of a three-alarm
fire. Its former chief, Roy Price, had recently been forced out for al-
leged sexual harassment, creating explosive headlines and sending
the studio’s leadership spinning. Broadly, Amazon was lagging far
behind Netflix and other competitors as they raced to stockpile cre-
ative talent for the streaming wars. For most consumers, Amazon Prime Video was an
afterthought—a freebie that came with signing up for free two-day shipping.
Some of Amazon Studios’ own creators wondered how the Seattle-based tech
company would manage to attract a talented Hollywood insider to replace Price. “It
was almost like, ‘Who on earth wants that horrible job?’” says Amy Sherman-Palladino,
cocreator of the award-winning series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, which at the time
had recently finished its first season at Amazon.
Salke, though, saw in Amazon Studios a forward-thinking enterprise that sought
a turnaround by that rarest type of Hollywood chieftain: a woman. “I was really for-
tunate to be in a time and place where, unfortunately, Amazon was faced with some
challenges, so there was such an openness and really embracing support of a female
leader,” says Salke when we meet in her Culver City office in late August.
“I loved my job,” she continues, referring to the seven years she spent at NBC.
“But I definitely was more than intrigued and really excited about coming to a place
that had that opportunity for truly diverse, global storytelling, and not being trapped
in more traditional models.” Amazon, she says with understatement, seemed like “a
company that really embraces risk taking and thinking big.”
Salke is seated in a white upholstered chair in the anteroom to her office, where
she takes pitch meetings with producers, directors, and writers. It’s furnished like a
family room—the kind where kids might sprawl on the sofa. Her office sits in a white
clapboard building that is part of the vast Culver Studios complex, which once housedW
THE AMAZON
RAINMAKER
When JENNIFER SALKE came to Amazon Studios
in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal, they
were lagging in the streaming wars. Today, she has
turned the unlikely content company into a
storytelling powerhouse. By Christina BinkleyPERSPECTIVES
130