Lisa Nishimura

The Netflix exec behind Oscar hopefuls from Ava DuVernay to Werner Herzog talks bringing back Making a Murderer and Chris Rock’s $40M payday

- Natalie Jarvey

For the past two years, Lisa Nishimura and her husband have been renovating their Mar Vista home, slowly assembling what she calls “our humble little dream house,” as she simultaneously builds Netflix’s influence in documentaries. The executive, who brought hit Making a Murderer to the streamer, and her 10-person team have been assembling a slate of projects almost as eclectic as her personal taste, which, when it comes to home design, leans toward Danish furniture and Japanese art. Among new offerings: Ava DuVernay’s look at mass incarceration in 13th, poaching doc The Ivory Game and Werner Herzog’s sweeping volcano pic Into the Inferno. Nishimura, 45, now looks increasingly like Netflix’s best hope to bring home its first Oscar this year. “It’s important to us because it’s important to our filmmakers,” says the child of Japanese immigrants who started in the music industry and joined Netflix in 2007 from indie DVD distributor Palm Pictures.

As Netflix grows its 86.7 million global subscribers and its content budget balloons past $6 billion, Nishimura will have ammo to compete in the competitive doc space once dominated by HBO. Netflix’s deep pockets extend to the other half of her job, too, where as the head of comedy programming, she made a big bet on Chelsea Handler and paid a reported $40 million to lure Chris Rock back for two stand-up specials.

Nishimura, mom to 7-year-old son Royal Kai, invited THR to Netflix’s Beverly Hills office to talk about Making a Murderer season two and who she’d like to see make a Trump-Clinton campaign documentary.

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