David Zaslav Teases More Streaming Bundles Are Coming, Remarks Plans To Produce New ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ Content for 10 Years
BURBANK, CALIFORNIA – APRIL 12: David Zaslav, President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, speaks onstage during a Warner Bros. Discovery Streaming Press Event at Warner Bros. Studios on April 12, 2023 in Burbank, California. (Photo by Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images for HBO)
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav attended this week the Goldman Sachs Communacopia and Technology Conference, where he made a series of interesting statements regarding the future of the company he oversees, and specifically, about the Warner Bros. film studio.
Via The Hollywood Reporter, on Wednesday, Zaslav admitted that, as the number of streaming services keeps growing and consumers are consistently more confused about which shows are on which platform, companies will keep pursuing bundling several streaming services. Max has already been playing in this arena over the past week, as they launched on September 1 a two-month partnership with AMC Plus to add an “AMC+ Picks on Max” section to the WBD streaming service that includes shows like Fear the Walking Dead or Killing Eve. It’s still unknown if this deal will be extended beyond these two months, but David Zaslav believes more (and possibly bigger) will follow soon, on Max or elsewhere. He said:
“You know, as we talk to consumers, they find it difficult, and so I think one of the things that we’re going to see as we look into the future is bundling. Some of this disruption and some of these moments of what’s going to happen may activate a quicker transition to things like some of us in the content business bundling together as a way to create more value and create a better consumer experience.”
One of Zaslav’s priorities ever since he took over WBD has been to milk the cow of the studio’s vast franchise portfolio, with three names top of mind: DC, Harry Potter, and Lord of the Rings. Movement has already started on all three — late last year, the company announced the creation of DC Studios, led by James Gunn and Peter Safran, who would answer directly to Zaslav and were tasked with rebooting the entire DC continuity to launch a new long-term franchise. Earlier this year, they announced an HBO series adaptation of JK Rowling’s Harry Potter books, with one season covering each installment. Before that, they signed a partnership with Embracer to make new Lord of the Rings movies. Zaslav repeated their intentions on moving fast on these IPs, but not in a way that would dilute the brands (via TheWrap):
“We think there’s a lot of shareholder value in attaching a 10-year DC — a real plan around DC, bringing ‘Harry Potter’ back to HBO for 10 consecutive years, doing multiple movies of ‘Lord of the Rings.’
“When you put those franchises in, it’s the best performing studio in the world. We need to deploy our best capital, and we need to do it with the best creative people in the world,”
These properties, along with everything under the Warner Bros. umbrella, will be set into motion very quickly after the strikes are resolved (of course, he didn’t specify when he’d be willing to sit down with either guild to meet their demands), as he said:
“We are ready and raring. As soon as these strikes are resolved, everybody is ready to get back to work.”
The statements come on the heels of David Zaslav himself announcing on a regulatory filing earlier this week that they expect a $300M-$500M hit on the studios’ 2023 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. Despite that, the free cash flow is expected to go up, as the studio is not spending money — and this is especially important because Zaslav’s contract is directly tied to the free cash flow, not the stock price. This means that, come March when his 2023 salary is announced to the public, he will be on the receiving end of a giant check.
Miguel Fernández is a Spanish student that has movies as his second passion in life. His favorite movie of all time is The Lord of the Rings, but he is also a huge Star Wars fan. However, fantasy movies are not his only cup of tea, as authors like Scorsese, Fincher, Kubrick or Hitchcock have been an obsession for him since he started to understand the language of filmmaking. He is that guy who will watch a black and white movie, just because it is in black and white.
