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Hulu CEO Jason Kilar had millions of reasons to quit.
He bagged a $6 million year-end bonus — on top of the $40 million payout he received for his Hulu stake in October — before announcing his resignation late yesterday, The Post has learned.
While flush with cash, Kilar, 41, told his staff in an e-mail that he was leaving with a heavy heart, saying it’s “impossible to state in words how much Hulu means to me.”
Industry watchers expected Kilar to quit right after he landed the $40 million payout, which coincided with Providence Equity selling its stake in Hulu. But the additional $6 million was clearly worth the extra three months’ wait.
What’s unclear is where Kilar will land next. He’s been spotted making the rounds of top venture capital firms in recent weeks, including Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield and Byers, Andreessen Horowitz and Greylock Partners.
Kilar is also tight with Jonathan Nelson, who has made a number of media-focused investments as the head of Providence.
In July, speculation swirled at the mogul retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, that Kilar was poised to join Facebook in a senior position, possibly taking over for COO Sheryl Sandberg.
There’s also chatter that Kilar might return to Amazon, where he was a senior vice president of software and one of CEO Jeff Bezos’ earliest hires.
No doubt Kilar will be in demand given his knowledge of both the technology and media worlds. He could prove particularly valuable to Amazon as it continues to roll out its own streaming video service to rival Netflix and Hulu.
Providence also kicked around a possible investment in Coinstar, which owns those Redbox DVD-rental kiosks, some months ago.
Coinstar’s CEO stepped down Thursday and will be replaced in March by the firm’s chief financial officer. Hiring Kilar could help jump-start Coinstar’s streaming video partnership with Verizon.
While Kilar figures out his next move, his exit poses some questions for owners Comcast, Disney and News Corp., including who will replace him. Kilar has clashed with Hulu’s big media backers at times over strategy, but he is widely credited with turning the site into a popular destination for TV viewing. (News Corp. also owns The Post.)
“There are some possible candidates” to replace him, said one source. They include: Ross Levinsohn, former interim CEO of Yahoo!; former NBCUniversal executive Jeff Gaspin; and Mark Shapiro, who has held top jobs at Six Flags and ESPN.
There’s also the question of whether Hulu’s partners will continue to invest in programming as terms tighten with traditional pay-TV distributors who want to be the sole conduit for all video online.
At this time last year, Kilar boasted Hulu would invest $500 million in programming in 2012. That claim is yet to be repeated this year, even though the firm collected almost $700 million in revenue in 2012. Kilar had been asking for $200 million to grow the business, sources said.
A rep for Hulu didn’t return a request for comment.