Warner Bros Discovery Q4 Revenue Slips On Ad And Studio Softness; Company Touts “Significant Operating And Financial Gains” In Streaming

In what should come as no surprise, James Gunn will be directing his own script for Superman: Legacy, a major lynchpin project which will off the the multi-platform connected DC universe – “Chapter One, Gods and Monsters” ­– which he and his DC’ Co-Chairmen & CEO Peter Safran are launching.

Ramin Setoodeh Co-Editor-in-Chief At 11:30 p.m., Daniel Kwan was ready for a late dinner. The movie that he co-directed — “Everything Everywhere All At Once” — had swept the 95th annual Academy Awards, winning a historic seven statues, including best picture and best director. But he hadn’t had a bite to eat in hours. So at Vanity Fair’s annual Oscars party, he grabbed an In-N-Out burger from a tray to refuel. But before he could dig in, he was greeted by one of his many fans — named Steven Spielberg. The man who saw his cinematic memoir, “The Fabelmans,” get crushed by the Daniels (as Kwan and his collaborator Daniel Scheinert are called) didn’t seem the least bit upset.

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Warner Bros. Discovery and Amazon Prime Video have set the launch date and pricing for their ‘Warner Pass’ offer in France to March 16. Priced at €9.99 per month, the offer will be available exclusively on Amazon Prime Video Channels in France, and will boast all of HBO programs, along with 12 channels, including Warner TV, Eurosport, Discovery Channel, Cartoon Network and CNN, as well as their associated on-demand services. Subscribers will benefit from a 30-day free trial until April 3. “The launch of Warner Pass exclusively as a Prime Video channel in France is the next step in our journey to become the destination for customers in France to find the best in storytelling, premium entertainment and sports,” said Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, Prime Video French Country Director.

Bloomberg reported on Thursday and TheWrap independently confirmed.The name change is meant to signal that the service will not just be HBO Max with Discovery content, nor will HBO Max be ported over to Discovery+. “Max” is the leading contender, though Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Discovery is continuing its directors program after all.

Charna Flam After the recent decision to reshape its directors’ training program, Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) announced its new Access Directors Program. WBD has rebranded and expanded the directors’ program to assist and nurture television directors through workshops and shadowing, led by WBD’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) team. Participants will receive the opportunity to direct a full WBD television episode. In addition to workshops, directors will have the chance to work on WBD shows and participate in a virtual curriculum focused on best practices and equity mindset sessions, with the ability to shadow directors on up to two television episodes (during which participants may receive a small childcare stipend).

Japanese streamer U-Next has renewed its content deal with Warner Bros Discovery, under which it will continue to be the SVOD streaming home of HBO programming in Japan. 

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor Warner Bros. Discovery, which is struggling with billions of dollars in debt, is willing to pay more money to executives who might be able to help reduce it. The owner of HBO, Discovery Channel and Food Network said Monday in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it would pay out new rewards to CEO David Zaslav, six senior staffers and an unspecified group of others if they could meet certain goals of new generation of free cash flow. “The changes to the Warner Bros. Discovery executive compensation program are designed to further incentivize Company employees, including members of its leadership team and others whose efforts are critical to achieving the key near-term financial objectives of increased free cash flow and reduced leverage,” said WBD board chairman Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr. in a prepared statement.“The WBD board is confident that these additional incentives offer a more competitive package against the backdrop of ongoing industry-wide transformation and economic headwinds, and better position the company to advance core drivers of shareholder value.”

Warner Bros. Discovery has tweaked its CEO’s employment contract, granting a bigger pot of restricted stock units but linking them to free cash flow targets.

Amazon Studios head Jennifer Salke feels about Warner Bros. making competing projects based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings.” Salke, who has held the top content job at Amazon since 2018, walked a Monday red carpet for the premiere of Michael B. Jordan’s “Creed III” where she spoke with Variety about last week’s news that Warner Bros. had secured film rights to some of Tolkien’s books. One of Salke’s defining moves at Amazon was to secure television rights to the same literary works, which she achieved at great expense. The first season of Amazon’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” premiered in 2022 with a big global marketing push and critical acclaim — as well as a reported budget north of $450 million for the first batch of episodes. Previously, Warner Bros. pushed out two massively successful film franchises with auteur Peter Jackson beginning in 2001. Those films grossed over $5 billion at the worldwide box office and brought home a best picture Oscar for one of the entries.

Seven months after landing the highly coveted top jobs at Warner Bros. Motion Picture studios, Co-Chairpersons Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were bestowed with the PGA Milestone award tonight and paid respect for their mega industry mentors, remembered emotionally their cinematic NYC and New Jersey youths, and gave a huge shoutout to their new boss, Warner Discovery CEO David Zaslav.

Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is suing Paramount Global, saying its competitor aired new episodes of the popular animated comedy series “South Park” after Warner paid for exclusive rights.

“Screw you guys, we’re going to sue,” a Cartman paraphrasing Warner Bros Discovery essentially said to Paramount Global and the series creators today in a scathing lawsuit over South Park streaming rights.

,” HBO Max said in a statement to TheWrap.Warner Bros. Discovery claims that Paramount’s priorities “changed drastically” upon the launch of Paramount+ in 2021, resulting in a “multi-year scheme to unfairly take advantage” of the former conglomerate by breaching its agreement and “stealing its content.”Per the 2019 agreement, where Warner/HBO outbid others in a competitive situation to garner the exclusive rights to the series, the company acquired the series’ entire catalog (23 seasons at the time) in addition to three new installments, totaling more than 300 episodes.

Gene Maddaus Senior Media Writer HBO Max’s parent company has filed a lawsuit that accuses Paramount Global of reneging on parts of the $500 million licensing deal set in 2019 for the streaming rights to episodes of “South Park.” The suit, filed Friday in New York state Supreme Court, asserts that Paramount breached the contract by steering “South Park” specials and other content to its own Paramount+ platform. The suit alleges that Paramount “blatantly intended to prop up Paramount+ at the expense of Warner/HBO,” and that Paramount engaged in “multiple and flagrant duplicitous contortions of fact and breaches of contract.”

Middle Earth is returning to the big screen.

The motivation for continuing to offer Discovery+ as a stand-alone streaming service after a combined offering with HBO Max debuts later this spring, is largely financial, Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav says.

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor David Zaslav sounds tired of taking lumps. After months of cost cutting, write-downs, and getting pilloried among Hollywood natives for killing projects, the Warner Bros. Discovery chief showed off some new truculence, making the case that while his newly-merged company has been having a tough time, so too were others. “‘Last year was a year of restructuring,” said Zaslav, during a call with investors Thursday. “This year will be a year of building.” Over the course of an hour, Zasalv and Gunnar Wiedenfels, Warner’s chief financial officer, made the case that their company was just as well-equipped as any of its rivals — perhaps even more so — to withstand a stormy era during which media companies are pressed to grow their streaming operations but maintain profitability. Zaslav elbowed Netflix for releasing all of the episodes for a program’s cycle all at once; suggested that a move to launch new “Lord of the Rings” movies would take away some of the momentum that Amazon had enjoyed from its launch of a series based on the novels; and told listeners Warner Bros. Discovery could launch an ad-supported streaming service without having to buy an outside asset, as Fox Corp. and Paramount Global had. “We can create a Tubi or a Pluto without having to buy anybody,” he boasted.

Call “2023 will be a year of building,” Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav made a point today on the company’s latest earnings call to sing the praises of CNN’s “more inclusive range of voices and viewpoints.”

Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels today predicted the company will hit $4 billion in total cost savings from the merger of Discovery and Warner Media – up from a previous commitment to hit $3.5 billion.