David Zaslav, CEO Of Warner Bros Discovery, Says They Will Not Release A Film "Unless We Believe In It"
Warner Bros has taken an axe to their stable, cancelling two almost completed major motion pictures and pulling several original movies from HBO Max. The deepest cut for fans has been the scrapping of the long-awaited Batgirl movie. This project had an exciting cast. Michael Keaton was returning to the franchise as well as Latinx lead in the stunning Leslie Grace. This film was also seen as a fresh start for Brendan Fraser whose career was derailed after a sexual assault. Warner Bros reportedly spent 90 million only to shelve Batgirl just months away from release.
Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav has said the studio has a ‘10-year plan focusing just on DC’. Zaslav inferred that Batgirl was not up to scratch, despite production being running reasonably smoothly. ‘The objective is to grow the DC brand, to grow the DC characters’ Zaslav said during the company’s Q2 earning call. He indicates that Black Adam, Shazam 2, and The Flash were features that he felt were more fitting to carry DC forward in the future. These films are all set for theatrical release, rather than Batgirl which was due to debut on the small screen. It seems that, unlike Netflix, and Disney, Warner Bros no longer sees any reason to invest large amounts of funding in straight-to-streaming original pictures. ‘We can’t find an economic value to it, so we’re making a strategic shift’.
So where does this leave HBO Max? It’s going to merge with Discovery+, but considering Warner Bros CEO’s disdain for original content, it’s going to be very difficult to keep up with the big players in the market.
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