This determination is building a reputation for Amazon Studios as a daring home
for creative talent, one that is ready to compete with the larger forces at rivals like
Netflix as well as the growing streaming competition on the way from Disney, Apple,
WarnerMedia, and now AT&T and HBO.
In order to draw that talent, Salke is embracing the industry’s addiction to what
she calls “fake” theatrical releases that can put a film in the running for awards season
and help boost its visibility in the flood of streaming releases. But she takes care to
note—on repeat—that Amazon Studios doesn’t embrace the system of rating a film’s
success based on its box-office results.
“Our North Star is to entertain Prime subscribers,” Salke says. “We care about the
percentage of Prime subscribers who see a show. That’s what I care about.”
The studio won’t release viewership statistics, so the relative successes of those
films, on a financial basis, won’t be publicly known. But as Salke builds a library of
entertainment for the more than 100 million subscribers of Amazon Prime in more
than 240 countries and territories, she is also creating myriad opportunities for cross-
pollination with Amazon’s many ventures and divisions. In a deal this fall with Rihan-
na, Amazon Studios agreed to film the musical artist and fashion entrepreneur’s Savage
x Fenty show for New York Fashion Week. As part of the deal, the lingerie collection
will be sold on Amazon.com.
Consider the resources that Amazon
can offer creators: Amazon Music, Amazon
Retail, Audible, the Twitch live-streaming
platform, and the ComiXology comics site
among them—not to mention book publishing.
“There’s a whole universe here that we’re tak-
ing advantage of,” says Vernon Sanders, Ama-
zon Studios’ cohead of television with Albert
Chen (who’s also the studio’s chief operating
officer). Sanders, who had worked with Salke
for seven years at NBC, came over when Sal-
ke asked him to join her. “She really changed
the course of my career,” he says, explaining
why he never really considered another op-
tion once she reached out. “I’m not sure I’ve
worked with someone who has such positivity
toward content creation and focusing on why
we should say yes.”
Salke is also attracting talent by rejecting
formulas that have guided so much television
and filmmaking into mediocrity—rules that
required so many shows to hire female stars with voluminous breasts, and to employ
white male leads. She worked within those rules for years, having begun her career
at Aaron Spelling Productions, then moving on to gigs at 20th Century Fox Television
and NBC Entertainment, where she was in charge of developing comedies and dra-
mas, casting, and diversity programming, as well as all Universal Television operations.
She is now pressing to expand the studio’s presence around the globe, particularly
in huge markets such as India and Brazil, where Amazon.com hopes to use the stream-
ing services to attract more shoppers to its site. The studio is taking on aspects of a truly
global entertainment filmmaker, with offerings such as The Family Man, an original
series from India, created by Krishna D.K. and Raj Nidimoru (Go Goa Gone), about a
middle-class man who works for an antiterrorism agency. The series is primarily in
Hindi, with some English and subtitles. “Language is no longer a barrier,” Salke says.
“Years ago, people would say that you need a white male star, that women should
be sexy,” she says. “You had talented people pitching original ideas who weren’t suc-
cessful because they didn’t check off all the boxes. Nobody wants to be bored by a mass
volume of the same type of show. We turned off generations of viewers; it didn’t feel
relevant to them. The opportunity for global storytelling—that’s where the wins are.
How exciting to be part of that!”
“I think she has an extremely big appetite for risk taking,” Peele says. “And I know
she has trust and faith in my ability to execute that risk. I think she and I are aligned
in that the television/streaming industry is saturated; there are just so many shows
out there. It feels like she’s ahead of the curve in what needs to be done to compete.”Salke is pursuing talent such as Phoebe Waller-
Bridge, writer-creator-star of the BBC series Fleabag
and the first-season showrunner of Killing Eve. “When
you see a creator like that, there’s a glow,” Salke says of
Waller-Bridge. “Phoebe is extremely in touch with what
she wants to say—she wants to be bold and ambitious.”
Salke is interrupted by an assistant who says her
daughter is on the line. She reaches for the phone and
listens, brow furled. “Oh no, I’m so sorry. Are you still
throwing up?”
Salke and her husband, Bert, have three children:
a son who’s a college sophomore, and twin daughters
who, in late August, were preparing to leave for their
freshman year at college. With the kids at school, Salke
planned a fall full of work and travel to Brazil and India
at the end of the year, where she’s pressing aggressively
to sign new talent.y the first week in September, Sal-
ke’s neck was sore—she’d twisted
it moving boxes into college dorms.
She had now settled all three kids
into their schools, but back in L.A.,
the new parental status hadn’t quite
sunk in. “Tonight’s my third night in the empty nest,”
she says. “I’m sure this weekend I’m going to be like,
‘Where are my chickens?’ I don’t even like thinking
about it during the day.”
Bert, Salke’s husband of 22 years, is president of
Fox 21 Television Studios, now part of The Walt Dis-
ney Company, which makes the Salkes something of a
power couple, but also potential competitors for talent.
Salke insists there’s no sense of rivalry, given their stu-
dios’ different goals. “The competition isn’t really an
issue; there’s so much opportunity out there.”
While her husband would love to talk about work
all evening and weekend, she says she prefers to leave
the office outside their home. “Big things might happen
at work, and he’d be the last to know. When I get home,
I really don’t like to talk about work.”
Within days of joining Amazon, Salke signed the
studio on with ReFrame, the organization that formed
out of #MeToo revelations to track and encourage gen-
der parity in film and television. Salke is on the organi-
zation’s advisory board, and has also signed a pledge
with Free the Bid, which seeks to open opportunities
for female directors bidding on commercial work. This
organization was founded by director Alma Har’el,
whom Salke met at Sundance while in discussions
to buy Honey Boy, which Har’el directed. “Everyone
who works with me here knows I have a high bar for
engaging diverse talent,” she says. “We have a diverse
audience all over the world.”
The studio reversed its controversial relationship
with filmmaker Woody Allen, which became more
embarrassing after Price’s departure and in the wake of
the explosion of allegations against Harvey Weinstein,
with whom Amazon Studios had cut ties in October- Under Price, the studio had agreed to distribute
Allen’s next films and a television series, despite long-
time allegations by Allen’s adopted daughter Dylan
“THE SHORTEST
WAY I CAN
SAY IT IS, SHE’S
VERY COOL.
WITH JEN...SHE’S
SECURE
AND CONFIDENT.
THAT’S VERY
REASSURING,
BECAUSE
EGO AND FEAR
LEAD TO
BAD DECISIONS.”
—JORDAN PEELEPERSPECTIVES
B
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