LOS ANGELES—Quentin Tarantino proposed a costly idea during a pitch to Universal Pictures executives for his 2015 western “The Hateful Eight.”
Mr. Tarantino, a die-hard cinephile, wanted to release the movie on 70-millimeter theatrical prints that required special projectors for the big screen.
Jeff Shell, at the time the head of the Universal studio, voiced his own pitch. “What if we released it on iPhones?” he said.
“Great,” Mr. Tarantino replied, and stormed out of the meeting.
The encounter captured Mr. Shell’s pragmatic view—a Harvard M.B.A. grad with a disregard for Hollywood ego-massaging and a willingness to toss aside business practices he sees as conventional or out of date.
He brings that attitude to the top job at Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal, where the 55-year-old chief executive oversees the NBC network, news division, cable channels from Bravo to USA and the Universal studio and its theme parks.
Visitors taking a selfie at the Universal Studios theme park in Orlando, Fla., during its June 5 reopening.
Photo: Gerardo Mora/Getty ImagesTurmoil from the Covid-19 pandemic, which has forced the company to close theme parks and halt production in Hollywood, has given Mr. Shell license to push for changes he felt were long overdue to drag the entertainment giant into the modern era, people familiar with his thinking said.
Movie Monsters
Universal’s top-grossing movies, by year, since 2010 and their box-office hauls in the U.S. and Canada
- 2010 | DESPICABLE ME
Box-office gross: $251.2 million
‘Despicable Me,’ was a hit for Universal in 2010.
Photo: Everett Collection- 2011 | FAST FIVE
$210 million - 2012 | TED
$218.7 million - 2013 | DESPICABLE ME 2
$368 million
- 2014 | NEIGHBORS
$150.1 million
- 2015 | JURASSIC WORLD
$652.3 million
- 2016 | THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS
$368.4 million
- 2017 | DESPICABLE ME 3
$264.6 million
- 2018 | JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM
$417.7 million
- 2019 | US
$175.1 million
The sly horror film ‘Us’ was Universal’s hit of 2019.
Photo: Everett Collection- 2020 | 1917
$156.9 million
- Source: The Numbers
Mr. Shell has reignited a fight with movie-theater chains, the culmination of a yearslong push to get movies onto digital platforms faster than possible in traditional arrangements. He also is carrying out a far-reaching restructuring to shift resources from aging broadcast and cable networks to the company’s new Peacock streaming-video service, the people said.
Last month, he ended the reign of NBC News Chairman Andy Lack, who presided over controversies involving former anchors Matt Lauer and Megyn Kelly. He has told senior executives he wants to explore making prime-time CNBC a destination for centrist and libertarian viewers, creating a clear counterpoint to MSNBC, which appeals to liberals, and to Fox News, whose prime-time lineup attracts conservative viewers.
Mr. Shell, who took over for Steve Burke as chief executive in January, is one of several relatively new entertainment industry CEOs—along with Walt Disney Co. ’s Bob Chapek, WarnerMedia’s Jason Kilar and ViacomCBS Inc.’s Bob Bakish—who have taken the helm in a time of crisis.
Ted Harbert, a former Disney and Comcast executive, said the pandemic has raised the stakes for Mr. Shell and other media chiefs, leaders who already needed radical steps to catch up with the sweeping changes in the way consumers watch entertainment and news.
“The bosses always worked in a frying pan. Now, they work in an inferno,” Mr. Harbert said. “This new crisis makes it hard to pay the electric bill, so now the new CEOs are really sitting up straight.”
Mr. Shell is trying to contain the immediate financial damage from the pandemic through cost-cutting and layoffs, while plotting ways to get employees and talent back to work safely. He knows the virus firsthand. In March, he fell ill with Covid-19 and recovered.
For years, Mr. Shell advocated for significant changes in the way new releases reach consumers. Today, nearly all Hollywood movies run exclusively in theaters for months before they are available through the so-called windows, such as at-home digital rentals and on-demand streaming.
In a good year, the system can bring in nearly $7 billion in world-wide box-office revenue for Universal. The problem is movie admissions are faltering: U.S. and Canadian theaters had about 1.24 billion in 2019, down 6% from 2015 and the lowest number in recent history. As the cinema-going habit declines, Mr. Shell believes the company should skip theaters with more straight-to-digital releases.
In Mr. Shell’s first phone call as Universal’s chief with Adam Aron, the CEO of theater giant AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc., Mr. Shell told him the traditional theatrical window was toast, according to a person familiar with the 2016 conversation.
Mr. Shell wasn’t able to make his vision come true at the time. But when the pandemic forced theaters to close this spring, he saw an opportunity. In April, he released the kids’ movie “Trolls World Tour” on a host of digital services rather than waiting for cinemas to reopen. Universal found ways to compensate stars, including Justin Timberlake, for any income lost in the absence of a theatrical release, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Scene from the Universal movie ‘Trolls World Tour.’
Photo: Everett CollectionMr. Aron of AMC was so incensed that he now refuses to book any Universal movies in the company’s more than 1,000 theaters and 11,000 screens.
In the past, that would be a grave punishment. Now, Mr. Shell believes viewers make fewer distinctions between what they watch on large or small screens. He wants film directors and producers to think about developing content for both, saying he sees little difference between a $5 million horror movie and a $10 million TV episode.
Chris Meledandri, chief executive of Illumination Entertainment, the company behind Universal’s lucrative “Minions” franchise, said he still bristles at Mr. Shell’s idea of alternating between “Minions” movies made for theaters and shows to watch at home. He worried the strategy could diminish franchise quality. He is now coming around to Mr. Shell’s view.
“I wanted to hold on to the world as I knew it,” Mr. Meledandri said. “I am certainly heading toward his vision of the future.”
Picks, pans
Mr. Shell was born in Ann Arbor, Mich., and bounced around the U.S. while his father served in the Air Force. The family settled in a middle-class Westside neighborhood of Los Angeles while he was in grade school.
He attended the University of California at Berkeley and then Harvard. After jobs at Disney and Fox, he joined Comcast in 2005, where he has overseen about every major operation NBCUniversal, except theme parks.
Mr. Shell earned the nickname “Shooter” early in his career for always shooting out new ideas. Some colleagues say his enthusiasm for them can be short-lived or quixotic, creating unnecessary work. “He always wants to shake things up,” a longtime colleague said. “ ‘What if we do this, what if we do that.’ It’s refreshing, but it can also be overwhelming.”
Actor Dwayne Johnson, left, and Jeff Shell, now chief executive of NBCUniversal, at the 2019 Hollywood premiere of the movie ‘Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw.’ Steven Spielberg and Mr. Shell at the 2018 premiere of the movie ‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ in Los Angeles.
Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images(2)When Comcast acquired rights to distribute Steven Spielberg’s films in 2015, Mr. Shell saw an opportunity to update some of Mr. Spielberg’s most famous movies. “What if we tried to reboot‘Jaws?’” he asked colleagues.
Mr. Spielberg has told Universal executives and others that he would only do another “Jaws” with the perfect script, an intentionally impossible standard, akin to asking da Vinci to paint a second Mona Lisa, people familiar with the matter said. The idea sank.
Mr. Shell is candid about not being a “creative executive” at a company that produces content. He mostly defers to his creative lieutenants and is known for sharing scripts and screeners with his wife, Laura Shell, and teenage daughter Anna. “My daughter loves it,” is a common refrain by Mr. Shell, a former studio executive said.
Laura Shell and Jeff Shell at the Golden Globe Awards last year in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Photo: Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty ImagesWhile running the film studio, Mr. Shell showed that his willingness to make big bets sometimes produced big duds. He wanted more franchises like Universal’s “The Fast and the Furious,” which can spawn sequels, merchandise and rides at Universal theme parks, a strategy that has paid off handsomely for Disney.
Rebooting “Jurassic Park” into the “Jurassic World” franchise set box-office records for Universal, and studio partner Blumhouse Productions produced the lucrative horror series “The Purge.” Illumination has new installments of the “Minions” franchise planned.
There also were failures. An idea to reboot classic Universal monster movies like “Dracula” and “Frankenstein” died along with the kickoff feature, “The Mummy,” a 2017 box-office dud.
When Universal won the rights to a new version of Dr. Doolittle, starring Robert Downey, Jr., as the 19th century physician who speaks with animals, Mr. Shell approved the deal with a franchise in mind. The movie, “Doolittle,” ended up one of the biggest box-office bombs in Universal history, collecting $77 million at the domestic box office on a budget of $175 million.
His predecessor, Mr. Burke, was a relatively hands-off chief executive. Mr. Shell reaches into the most granular details of company operations. When Comcast’s E! Network was considering a spin off to “Keeping Up with the Kardashians” in 2009, producer Ryan Seacrest was surprised to get a call from Mr. Shell, who was a few executive layers removed from the discussion.
“Do you think this spin off is going to work,” Mr. Seacrest recalled Mr. Shell saying. “I had no idea, but I said `Yes.’ ” The TV show, “Courtney and Khloé Take Miami,” got the green light and became the first of several successful Kardashian spinoffs.
“He has compound eyes like a fly,” Mr. Seacrest said. “He is aware of everything that can be happening on multiple levels simultaneously.”
Colleagues and friends say Mr. Shell walks fast, makes fast decisions, even eats fast. In Manhattan, he favors a sushi spot near NBCUniversal’s Rockefeller Center headquarters: The restaurant promises to have diners in and out within 30 minutes.
Mr. Shell is upbeat—he has told friends he can’t remember a single bad dream—and humble, especially by Hollywood standards.
“He’s not one of those don’t-you-know-who-I-am guys,” said his Beverly Hills neighbor Mark Hoppus, bassist in the punk-pop band Blink 182. “He’s just as comfortable eating McDonald’s drive through as he is going to Spago.”
Jeff Shell, left, and Bruce Rosenblum, former chairman and CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, at the 2016 Academy Awards in Hollywood, Calif.
Photo: Randy Shropshire/Getty ImagesChanging channels
Mr. Shell is overhauling NBCUniversal’s TV operations. Given cable’s decline, he doesn’t see a point in continuing to run the company’s many cable TV brands—USA, Syfy, Bravo, E! and such—as distinct units. Annual revenue from Comcast’s cable networks fell 2.2% last year to $11.5 billion, the fallout from cable cutters, lower ratings and lower ad revenue. The decline was partially offset by increases in subscription fees for their channels.
Mr. Shell hopes to centralize programming into a single hub that would determine which shows are best for various NBCUniversal platforms, said people familiar with the situation. As part of the change, senior managers, including those at the top levels of the cable networks, are auditioning to keep their jobs, these people said.
Under Mr. Shell’s restructuring, which began last month, NBCUniversal has created a division, NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, to house the cable networks, the NBC broadcast network, international channels and the Peacock streaming service, which he feels was late to the market.
Mr. Shell has long expressed a desire for NBC to be more aggressive in direct-to-consumer streaming, current and former NBC executives said.
He has told associates he is concerned that Peacock doesn’t have as deep or broad a catalog as rivals Netflix Inc. and AT&T Inc.’s HBO Max, according to a person familiar with the matter. The streaming service offers new original content and such library fare as the movie “ET: The Extra-Terrestrial” and episodes of “Parks and Recreation.
Mr. Shell wants to make sure NBCUniversal has a plan to make money in the digital sphere on premium sports content such as “Sunday Night Football,” the person said.
The chief executive wants Peacock to be nimble and have a culture able to adjust to the evolving market. He says “pivot” so much the Peacock team had the word printed on the front of T-shirts.
Which Streaming Services Are Right for You? Take the WSJ Quiz.
Inside NBC News, Mr. Shell learned in various meetings that morale was low under Mr. Lack. Among the reasons was the way the network handled the exit of Mr. Lauer, the “Today” host who was accused of sexual harassment, as well as its clashes with reporter Ronan Farrow over his investigation of sexual-assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein.
NBC fired Mr. Lauer in 2017 after reviewing the misconduct allegations, which he denied. Some staffers were upset the network didn’t hire an outside investigator to see if there were deeper problems in the news unit.
The network had said Mr. Farrow’s work on Mr. Weinstein wasn’t ready for airing. Mr. Farrow published his story in the New Yorker and won a Pulitzer Prize. In March, Mr. Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison for sex crimes.
Mr. Shell had a history with Mr. Lack. He had wooed the former NBC news chairman in 2015 to be the first chief executive of the Board of Broadcasters, the government agency that oversees Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and other state-run media.
Mr. Lack accepted. But barely a month into the job, he resigned to take the NBC News post, irritating Mr. Shell, people familiar with the situation said.
Mr. Burke had promised NBC News President Noah Oppenheim that he would succeed Mr. Lack. But Mr. Shell wanted a business executive at the helm instead of another journalist, senior news executives said. He installed Cesar Conde, the former head of NBCUniversal’s Telemundo.
Cesar Conde, former head of NBCUniversal’s Telemundo, became the NBC News Chairman this year.
Photo: Jesus Aranguren/Associated PressThrough an NBC spokesman, Mr. Lack declined to comment.
In the months ahead, Mr. Shell will be judged by the company’s success in navigating the pandemic, selling more movie tickets for its studio releases, expanding its streaming audience and keeping viewers loyal to traditional broadcast and cable channels in a scary and unpredictable market.
It is a tall order. But Mr. Shell is like one of those rock climbers with low-activity amygdala, the part of the brain that registers fear, Mr. Meledandri of Illumination Entertainment said.
“If they did a brain scan of Jeff,” he said, “it would be similar.”
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Write to Joe Flint at joe.flint@wsj.com and Erich Schwartzel at erich.schwartzel@wsj.com
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