In a strategic move, the CEO and Chairman of Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav cut three major and upcoming DC projects, namely bat girl, Scoob! Holiday destinationand wonder twins. Although the latter has not yet passed the pre-production phase, the other two were almost ready to launch. The cancellation knocked the new WB Discovery back to its basic emerging image and David Zaslav had nothing to add except defending his sweeping decision.
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David Zaslav Cites An MCU-Like Strategy For DC’s Future
When AT&T’s WarnerMedia merged with Discovery in April 2022, the new Warner Bros. Discovery has appointed David Zaslav as CEO and President. Under his leadership, the company made sweeping changes to the entire strategic shape of DC and its programs. And the first major step he incorporated was to move away from single project releases to a “10-year plan focusing only on DC”not too different from Kevin Feige’s MCU.
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Zaslav mentioned, “The goal is to grow the DC brand, grow the DC characters. But also, our job is to protect the DC brand. And that’s what we’re going to do. While talking about the recent cancellation of bat girlhe mentioned that the movie is “quality” didn’t live up to what he envisioned for DC – “We’re not going to release a movie until it’s ready. We’re not going to release a movie to make a quarter and we’re not going to release a movie unless we believe in it.
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HBO Max’s WB Discovery move to theatrical releases
To look at it purely from a business perspective, DC’s agenda of launching projects directly onto streaming platforms was doing more harm than it was promoting. Zaslav asserted, “This idea of expensive movies going straight to streaming – we can’t find an economic justification for it, we can’t find any economic value to it, so we’re making a strategic shift.”
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Additionally, the practice of producing direct-to-air projects under the WB and DC banner was widely enacted under the former leadership led by Ann Sarnoff and Jason Kilar at WarnerMedia. In retrospect, it wasn’t a savvy business decision on WB’s part and it didn’t build on DC’s broader brand image.
“We will fully embrace cinema as we believe it creates interest and demand, provides excellent marketing tailwind and generates word of mouth buzz as films move to streaming and beyond. We have a different view on the wisdom of releasing movies on direct streaming, and we have taken aggressive steps to of course correct the previous strategy.
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For now, David Zaslav is very encouraging for future DCEU projects such as the flash, black adamand Shazam! Fury of the gods. It remains to be announced, however, when the CEO of WB Discovery plans to launch his long-term vision for DC or who will be responsible for leading this team.
The next DCEU release will be Black Adam, who premieres on October 21, 2022.
Source: Variety
