Warner Bros. Executive Jeff Goldstein Admits They Need To “Right The Ship,” And Reports Suggest CEO David Zaslav Believes The Answer Is “Big IP”
What’s the first step in recovery? Admitting you have a problem. Practically all of us know this axiom, even studio executives insulated by their industry bubble. And like most, they had to learn the hard way by hitting bottom.
At CinemaCon this year, after a long streak of bombs since 2023, begotten by a series of bad decisions during the preceding decade, Jeff Goldstein, president of Global Distribution for Warner Bros. Pictures, had to acknowledge the obvious. They are losing money in a climate that is currently too expensive.
“That’s the bigger story here,” he said (via Deadline) during a panel featuring other top Hollywood execs. Remarking on the “problematic…economics of making motion pictures,” Goldstein continued, “What’s that value proposition?”
He adds, “How do you make movies that net a studio money in today’s economy, and particularly from legacy studios? It’s much different than streaming companies that have different [kinds] of funding.”
High costs and diminishing receipts are magnifying Hollywood’s anxieties. Almost every movie is big-budget these days. More money than ever is poured into productions for various untenable and specious reasons, but fewer and fewer people are going to see them.
This has been a crisis for DC since 2020 and Birds of Prey, regardless of the pandemic and global lockdowns. However, it’s been hitting Warner Bros. harder across the board lately. Outside unlikely hits such as Barbie and A Minecraft Movie, when they put their faith in something ambitious and director-driven like Mickey 17, they fumble badly.
“I sit right in the middle of that. The dollars we spend are, in many cases, much greater than we’ve ever spent before, but the effectiveness is much less,” Goldstein confessed, “when you look at those numbers, quite frankly, it does keep you up at night, and it keeps me up at night.”
“We are looking, as an industry, at how do you get that audience?” he added. “The fact that you have to hit a bull’s-eye right in the center [because] now you don’t get past the previews. The world is a village, and information gets out in a nanosecond, and it can really kill a concept that you may have been working out for a long period of time.”
“Unfortunately, Warner Bros has had a few misses with really expensive movies, and at our [post-mortems] we’ll go back and say, ‘Okay, what did we do wrong? What would we like to do next time? And how do we overcome it?’” he explained. “So much of it is frustration of not to be able to reach an audience.”
Still, Goldstein and the company are determined, albeit nervously so. “We have to figure out how we can right the ship. I think that we’ll get there pretty soon,” he said, “because we have to, we don’t have a choice.”
Goldstein’s boss, David Zaslav, thinks he knows how to “right the ship” against all odds. According to insiders, his solution lies in what worked in the aforementioned cases of Barbie and Minecraft – major, recognizable IP.
“Sources close to the situation say Zaslav wants to focus on big IP, versus the sort of filmmaker-driven fare that [Pam] Abdy and [Michael] De Luca are known for,” says The Hollywood Reporter.
“He is also said to be unhappy with the amount of money the two are spending on these non-IP projects. Abdy and De Luca allies say the two executives are consummate professionals and are resigned to the fact that their fate at Warners is uncertain amid a changing climate,” THR’s coverage adds.
Reports swirl and pirouette that Zaslav is getting rid of Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, and is actively looking for their replacement. Likewise, it’s been suggested that DC Studios co-president Peter Safran will be the one to succeed them.
Those plans, if they are in motion or being considered, could be put on hold due to Minecraft’s success. Since the film was jointly greenlit by Zaslav, Abdy, and De Luca, the latter’s jobs might be saved by the Jack Black comedy based on a popular sandbox game, as might their habitual spending sprees.
If so, Zaslav and WB are learning the wrong lessons and not trying to recover at all. Not every IP is guaranteed to be a hit, and it’s become next to impossible to mine them with the mismanagement of formerly strong properties, including DC, Harry Potter, and Mad Max.
Moreover, that’s just at Warner. Elsewhere, Marvel, Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who are floundering because the people in charge don’t care about their audience. Zaslav and his underlings must understand that before they can fix anything. Again, admitting your problem is only step one.
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