Hobnobing: Zaslav with Steven Spielberg Photo: AUDE GUERRUCCI/AFP via Getty Images
Until a few months ago, if you were asking most moviegoers what they thought of Zaslav, they might have wondered if you were referring to the 1974 sci-fi movie in which Sean Connery wears a red rubber diaper and goes to war. against a giant stone head. However, John Boorman's Zardoz madness can hardly be compared to the wild and pernicious reign of David Zaslav, who took over as chief executive of Warner Bros Discovery 14 months ago and seems to have barely stepped on his feet since.
63-year-old Zaslav took over last year as a result of a merger last year between WarnerMedia, the parent company of the Warner Bros film studio, and Discovery Inc, the actual programming network that became famous for its early Sky TV nature and science documentaries. years.
During Zaslav's presidency, which began in 2006, he rose to prominence through lifestyle and reality shows, including «Dr. in which immigrants try to convince a US citizen to marry them before their temporary visa expires.
Whatever the case, he now leads the century-old Hollywood institution that gave us Casablanca, A Star Is Born, 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Dark Knight.
Zaslav was supposed to calm the waters after the tumultuous Warner Bros. pandemic, during which the studio's rapid turn to streaming alienated many of its most valuable employees. (It is believed that this is why Christopher Nolan — a 20-year-old ally of the studio — instead gave his future Oppenheimer to Universal.) >David Zaslav with Martin Scorsese. Photo: Getty
And he certainly acts like an old-school studio mogul. The child of Polish and Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, he is completely self-made and considers the legacy of his role enough to have the desk of Jack L. Warner himself, the studio's longtime co-founder, pulled out of storage and installed in his office. . He and his wife live in a sprawling French Regency mansion in Beverly Hills that once belonged to Chinatown and The Godfather producer Robert Evans. And in Cannes this year, he threw a lavish party at the Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc with Leonardo DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson among gilded revelers in the midst of the first writers' strike in 15 years.
There are also stories of intense 6:30 AM phone calls to studio executives and bouts of insane micromanagement. The generous to bullish imagery is perfect for this job. The only problem is the work, which can hardly be much worse.
The latest misstep occurred earlier this week when Warner Bros. Turner Classic Movies has announced layoffs to cut costs. . While the TCM brand means little in the UK, it is appreciated by filmmakers in the US: Martin Scorsese recently mentioned in an interview that he and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker use it as inspiration for their film editing.
Ezra Miller in The Flash. Author: A.P. Meeting alone with Zaslav with a petition for pardon. Needless to say, it's hard to convince your employees and shareholders that it's all about a safe pair of hands when three of the most respected working directors are jumping on Zoom to beg for a rethink.
However, it helped distract from the bombing of The Flash, Warner Bros' flagship comic book blockbuster during the summer months. The Flash was filmed long before Zaslav's regime — in fact, filming was originally completed in October 2021 — but extensive reshoots and other multi-faceted re-shoots have caused significant delays.
Since he was not personally responsible for this notoriously troublesome project, Zaslav could easily keep him at arm's length. (Many new studio executives did the same.) Instead, however, he abandoned the studio's marketing power entirely, positioning it during months of hype as «one of the greatest superhero films ever made.» Alas, the queue was not swallowed by critics and audiences alike, and amid indifferent reviews, The Flash opened for just $55 million in the US—nearly 25 percent below industry expectations—and even less in the UK at £4.2 million.
David Zaslav at Cannes with Robert De Niro and Tiffany Chen, May 2023. Photo: Getty
Perhaps The Flash was so expensive that spending good money on bad money seemed justified. This, of course, is not the case for the studio's more modest-budget film Batgirl, which was among a number of projects that Zaslav's regime canceled as a tax write-off last August despite being close to completion. Again, for actors, directors, and writers, this was chilling. Who would want to work for a studio that was willing to remove the fruits of their labor to temporarily annoy accounts?
One can imagine that the Batgirl cast was less than impressed with the photos from Zaslav's Cannes night. began to leak — or because of subsequent news that Graydon Carter, the former editor of Vanity Fair who hosted it, was also overseeing an expensive renovation of the famed gourmet restaurant at the Warner Bros Studios in Burbank.
In the midst of the Hollywood Writers' Strike, this is a particularly bad time to waste on trifles, as Zaslav learned firsthand when he gave his commencement address—or at least tried to—at Boston University last month.
«Pay your authors!» repeatedly mocked the crowd, and Zaslav stammered in his speech.
These blunders are not limited to cinema. At CNN, Warner Bros Discovery's non-stop news channel, a recent attempt to politically balance its liberal-distorting coverage has infuriated both left and right and caused staff morale to plummet. And streaming service HBO Max, which was inspired by the popular HBO TV brand known for The Sopranos, The Wire, Sex and the City and Game of Thrones, was inexplicably renamed Max in April. Warner Bros Discovery's share price will drop by six percent.
In Zaslav's defense, these bad decisions regarding streaming, branding, and treatment of artists and the public are hardly original. All of them have been made many times all over Hollywood in the last couple of years.
Remember, too, it only takes a couple of major critical and commercial hits this year—maybe Barbie, or Dune: Part Two, or the prequel Charlie and the Chocolate Factory — Wonka—for the industry . basically forgive and forget. For now, though, they have a new supervillain to focus their wrath on. And many other executives in many other studio boardrooms will be relieved.
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