If you go back and listen to the early days of our Film Box Podcast, you might recall our bread and butter topic was how much of a shitshow Warner Bros. Discovery was ever since David Zaslac took over. When we began talking about them, they had completed their merger and had immediately begun vaulting projects like Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt for tax write-offs. They recently did the same thing to Coyote vs. ACME. In the few years since, things have not really gotten brighter for the company. All this comes from an article released recently by Kim Masters at Puck, and a Bloomberg article by Thomas Buckley.
Before even getting into this, I want to make my position clear: I couldn’t care less about how much a movie makes at the box office. I am not a shareholder in any distribution company, so my only benefits come from watching great, creative movies come out each year that I get to cherish and rewatch forever. However, it would be naive and honestly ignorant to pretend that the box office results of movies don’t have consequences: whether it’s for the directors in charge of the movies and their ability to make future movies or the company and their ability to keep making movies in the future. I would love to live in a world where the people in charge of deciding which movies were made and which weren’t were creatives and had the art’s best interests in mind, but the reality is they’re run by suits who need to turn a profit for their shareholders.
To call a spade a spade, the general viewing audience is guiding the hands of these executives with their theater-going habits. Below are the top 10 grossing movies of 2024 domestically. Every single movie here is a sequel or part of an existing IP (intellectual property). This is more of a generalization, but since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down theaters, people have tended to only show out for “tentpole movies”, the franchise movies that they’re familiar with that they don’t feel like they’ll waste their time watching. Add in rising costs of going to the theater, and people are going to be more selective with what they pay to see.
All this leads to what is rumored to be happening behind the scenes at Warner Bros. after the disappointing release of Mickey 17. Current heads of the studio, Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, have had a reputation of green-lighting a lot of projects. Some were massive hits like Barbie and Joker, while others like House of Gucci and Joker: Folie a Deux bombed hard. While the pair were not leads for Mickey 17’s pre-production, they were still in high enough roles to have input. The problems go beyond rolling out too many big-budget flops. Joker: Folie a Deux never test screened due to Todd Philips’ fear of leaks, and Mickey 17 apparently did not screen well, but it was dismissed because neither did Parasite. They gave full power to their directors, which I respect, but they ended up eating $200 million for Phillips to subvert fan expectations too far, and they will probably have to eat close to that for Mickey 17, which is a shame because I enjoyed that movie a lot but I get that it’s weird and not a movie that would appeal to a general audience.
They are able to bring in talent and have a really good slate of movies coming out in 2025 and beyond, which is all movie fans should care about. In 2025 alone, you should be excited about Sinners, F1, Superman, The Conjuring: Last Rites, Final Destination: Bloodlines, The Bride!, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s new movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. Plus, they have Wuthering Heights, Weapons, Tom Cruise and Alejandro G. Inarritu’s new movie together, and more coming beyond that.
The rumor that started from a Bloomberg article back in February is that the pair is likely on the outs with Peter Safran, co-chair and co-CEO of DC Studios, as their replacement. While it has been denied publicly, you never know what is happening behind the scenes. David Zaslav has shown himself to be a penny-pincher, and he could force a change that could shift to lower budgets in an attempt to overcompensate for their recent struggles. I am no expert on who Safran is as a person or as an executive, but he was trusted to head this new era for DC, so he clearly has that respect in the company. He comes from a talent management background as well as producing movies, so he can balance the personal relationships with the fundamentals of getting movies made, from the business side and from the creative side.
Everything in this write-up is based on rumors, so tomorrow, everything I just wrote could be debunked and irrelevant. But this is a fast-paced industry where things can change in the blink of an eye. It is something to keep an eye on, as if these rumors are true, we could see a major shift in how Warner Bros. approaches movies moving forward.
I've always been a movie fan, but I first got big into cinema watching Whiplash when I was younger. That movie led to a greater appreciation of films and got me to dive into the medium. My favorite genre is horror movies, but I’ll always have a secret soft spot for rom coms and musicals. When I'm not podcasting or watching movies, I love working out and going hiking, and I currently work in business analytics with the degree I got from Western New England University.
MY FAVORITE MOVIES: Good Will Hunting, Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse, Whiplash, Moneyball, Top Gun: Maverick