Hollywood revolves around the earnings results of Warner Bros. Discovery’s upcoming and plans for a compact streaming service, which could flip the most popular streaming software.
Zaslav and his clients have been quietly sending in big-name and talented showrunners, with HBO content chief Casey Bloys taking on a larger role as the two streaming platforms are combined, according to a senior Hollywood executive.
We’re told Louise, the game maker who has received HBO 140 Emmy nominations and is set to release “House of the Dragon” with “Game of Thrones” on August 21, will definitely take charge of all written content.
“HBO is very safe. If this is Game of Thrones, then Casey Bloys has won,” a Hollywood agent familiar with the plans said.
Bloys may also be responsible for content in general, including Discovery’s list of unwritten offerings. But other insiders tell us that an executive’s unscripted is likely to fall into the discovery side of the company, which has built its brand with non-fiction content produced for cable channels Discovery, TLC, Animal Planet, Food Network, HGTV, History and more. Whoever is driving the content is expected to report directly to Zaslav.
WBD is in a perilous position when it comes to appeasing Hollywood’s top creators, something that became even more pressing Wednesday after the studio suspended DC Comics’ Batgirl. The entertainment industry was surprised that the mostly finished film starring Leslie Grace, which cost about $90 million to produce, would not be seen on stage or on streaming services.
Speculation that layoffs on hand began spreading across HBO offices late Tuesday afternoon, with an insider stating that the pay-TV channel’s employees are “all terrified” and that “all I know is that they’re switching HBO Max to HBO, and there will be be redundant.”
“Everyone at Warner Bros. Discovery is nervous right now, and [they’re] “They started looking at alternative business options should they get the axe,” said a company insider. “Looks like they don’t do HBO Max scripts anymore with HBO taking over, so the scripts are down overall.”
HBO Max development is expected to be hit hard by layoffs with two sources putting the amount of cuts to the development team at 70%. “HBO Max has a development team, and it’s a lot of overhead,” explained the knowledgeable agent. “And why do you need a development team at HBO and HBO Max? It’s redundant. Just have the Casey Bloys team do all the development of the TV script.”
A Warner Bros. representative did not respond. Discovery has asked TheWrap for comment.
Wall Street was expecting Warner Bros. Discovery will soon release some major moves to reorganize the company’s streaming assets, which also includes CNN News. But Zaslav and his senior deputies have been resilient about the timing or structure of the broadcast strategy. And there has been much speculation about the name of the new service – keeping the HBO and Discovery brands, or perhaps a new name referring to the Warner Bros. studio. famous.
It’s unclear what Zaslav’s broadcast plans are for CNN. Chris Licht, the personal friend of Zaslav who is hired to replace Jeff Zucker at CNN, has the unbeatable mission of fixing the fortunes of the streaming news network after a disaster called CNN+. It remains to be seen if this will somehow be bundled with Discovery-HBO’s new integrated streaming service.
HBO and HBO Max had 76.8 million subscribers, as of the end of March, while Discovery+ had 24 million. In comparison, Netflix has 220.7 million subscribers while Disney+ has 137.7 million.
Zaslav, who sealed the $43 billion deal for Discovery to buy WarnerMedia and received $246 million for doing so, on Thursday released the first quarterly results for the new combined company. Wall Street will cling to his every word about the $3 billion in savings in merger costs and any details about the movie slate’s ambitions.
Warner Bros. stock soared. Discovery has increased by 12% in just the past three trading sessions and has continued to rise on Wednesday. But there is market unease about how successful Zaslav will be in trying to completely fix the bloated studio system at the same time that the economy is expected to take care of the recession.
Zaslav has been on the fast track since taking power nearly 100 days ago.
The ouster of Warner Bros. chairman Toby Emmerich created a new group of movie industry hitters. He called in former Disney film chief Alan Horn last week to help nurture the company’s theatrical strategy along with new studio directors Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdi.
Zaslav took on the challenge by dividing the studio into three distinct divisions – Warner Bros. and New Line, DC Entertainment and Warner Animation Group – with a Disney-style structure that reports directly to him. This new three-silo system gives Zaslav the ability to run Warner Bros. “like an old-school movie mogul,” a Warner insider said. Even the $23 million “DC League of Super-Pets” movie’s release this weekend wasn’t too bad for the pandemic-era summer box office slump.
