Warner Bros. Discovery To Boost CEO David Zaslav’s Stock Bonus Based On Free Cash Flow

Tom Cruise is reportedly one of the first people on the planet to see DC’s upcoming movie The Flash.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Warner Bros. Discovery received stock upgrades from two media analyst firms Friday for, among other things, making the decision to tie bonuses for CEO David Zaslav and his team to free cash flow performance. “We threw everything and the kitchen sink at a Downside Case scenario for WBD, and it still delevers to 3x by ’25E,” Wells Fargo analysts wrote in a research note published Friday, in which they upgraded WBD’s stock to “overweight” with a price target increase from $13 to $20 per share. “We now have conviction in FCF to limit downside, while the stock has asymmetric upside.” Meanwhile, Wolfe Research moved WBD from its “peer perform” rating to “outperform” and also upped the price target to $20. (At time of publication Friday, WBD stock was trading at $14.51 per share.)

series of layoffs and reshuffled top executives last year, and in the fourth quarter of 2022 it booked $3.05 billion in charges related to the merger.“Last year was a year of restructuring, 2023 will be a year of building. And off we go,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav told analysts on the company’s earnings call.

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.

A24, the scrappy indie studio that has built a brand for itself as a home for hip and cutting-edge movies, triumphed over its deeper-pocketed rivals at the Oscars on Sunday. It scored a leading nine wins, topping that of its closest competitor, Netflix, which had to settle for six trophies. Plus, A24 not only captured best picture for “Everything Everywhere All at Once” but also pulled off the incredibly rare feat of winning every major acting category, with three statuettes coming for the cast of the head-spinning adventure film and the other one recognizing Brendan Fraser’s work in “The Whale.” But don’t expect the studio to do a victory lap. Co-founders David Fenkel and Daniel Katz (who named their shop after the highway that connects Rome to Teramo) shun the spotlight and have done almost no interviews or profiles, though they have certainly been asked. Rather, the indie moguls say they prefer to let their films speak for themselves — an anomaly in Hollywood, where executives usually push one another aside to claim credit for successes.

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.

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.

13D and 13G reports. For those outside of the inside-baseball world of corporate finance: Forty-five days out from the end of the year, companies are required to have filed 13D and 13G disclosure forms with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These reports are required for investors who amass 5% or more of a company’s total stock issue. Starting with this primer on how to monitor big-dollar investment bets, Variety will offer a quarterly survey of how the media and entertainment sector is faring among the world’s most sophisticated stock pickers.

Elon Musk prodded advertisers “to use Twitter yourselves, and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Elon Musk, who acquired Twitter in a $44 billion, debt-laden deal a little over four months ago, said advertising revenue has dropped as much as 50% since he took over. But the mega-billionaire tech mogul said a few large advertisers have continued to spend with Twitter, and he specifically called out — and thanked — Disney and Apple as remaining two of the biggest marketers on the social network, speaking Tuesday at the 2023 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco. According to Musk, Twitter is improving its ability to serve timely and relevant ads. He said he was speaking with David Zaslav, CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, who asked Musk why Twitter couldn’t put an ad with the trailer for HBO hit show “The White Lotus” next to every tweet that mentions “White Lotus.” Musk responded affirmatively, describing it as basic keyword-based ad buys that Twitter is now selling: “It’s just Google AdWords but applied to tweets.”

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.”

With today’s “urgent reminder” directed to its membership, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences again is doing its damnedest to get out the vote. The Oscar event is still a battlefield of “gold, sweat and tears” as portrayed in Oscar Wars, Michael Schulman’s new book, despite the ominous industry challenges.

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.

Lord Of The Rings films, but not everyone is happy about it.Warner Bros Discovery’s CEO, David Zaslav, announced on an investors’ call on Thursday that a deal had been brokered to make “multiple” films based on J. R.

Middle Earth is returning to the big screen.

The obvious question in David Zaslav’s reveal today that Warner Bros/New Line intend to to head back into Middle-earth with rights owner Embracer and expand the Lord of the Rings franchise is this: What do the Kiwi creatives who architected the Oscar-winning, billion-dollar-grossing franchise feel about the whole thing?

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.

Warner Bros Discovery revenue fell 11% to $11 billion (or a drop of 9% when foreign exchange fluctuations are excluded), mostly due to advertising softness and tough studio comparisons.