Digital media giant Netflix may be interested in signing former MasterChef judges George Calombaris, Matt Preston and Gary Mehigan, according to showbiz guru Peter Ford.

And he’s listed five possible replacements for the trio on the Channel 10 cooking show.

In a major shock, Calombaris, Preston and Mehigan won’t be returning to the top-rating program after contract negotiations broke down.

They’d packaged themselves with the network as an “all or nothing” deal.

There’d been a stack of public pressure on Channel 10 to dump Calombaris after he admitted to underpaying employees at his restaurants by $7.8 million.

There’s reports the trio was chasing a significant pay rise, which led to the negotiations breaking down.

Speaking on 3AW Breakfast, Peter Ford said the trio needed to “get their story straight” about why they left.

“George Calombaris was saying they couldn’t make the dates work, it wasn’t about the money, Gary Mehigan was saying they needed more free time to explore their creativity, it wasn’t about the money, but Matt Preston said, yeah, it was about the money,” Ford told Ross and John.

“They really do have to decide what PR line they’re going to spin.”

Ford said it was unlikely the trio would move to another television network, but they could attract interest from Netflix.

“Netflix need to do some Australian content,” he explained.

“And what a lot of people may not realise is that Matt, Gary and George actually have a big international fan base.”

Peter Ford went on to list five possible names that could be in the running to fill the void left behind on MasterChef – Curtis Stone, Poh Ling Yeow, Maggie Beer, Kylie Kwong and Gabriel Gaté.

“There’s absolutely no shortage of people,” he said.

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