Sep 30, 2022

Warner Bros.: "We're Not for Sale

Rumors are circulating that Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) may be looking to sell again in the not-too-distant future, despite having just completed a merger earlier this year.

However, Deadline reports that WBD CEO David Zaslav, speaking at a company-wide town hall on Wednesday, denied these rumors, saying, "We are not for sale, absolutely not for sale."

According to sources present at the WBD Zoom call, Zaslav told employees, "We have the strongest hands in the industry. We have everything we need to become the largest entertainment and media company in the world."

The company's employees are also being told that the company is "a leader in the entertainment and media industry, and we are ready to take the lead.

According to these sources, the meeting lasted about 75 minutes, during which Zasraf claimed that the entire industry is currently suffering and stressed the importance of patience while steering through choppy waters.

Zaslav was joined by Casey Bloys, chief content officer of HBO and HBO Max; Channing Dungey, chairman of Warner Bros. Television Group; and recently promoted Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group Michael De Luca and Pam Abdi participated in a conference call.

De Luca and Abdy took turns promoting the company's upcoming feature films and confirmed that Zaslav plans to release 15 to 20 feature films theatrically per year. This strategy is consistent with the CEO's comments during this summer's Q2 earnings call, in which he stressed that all films produced by WBD should be of theatrical quality.

Wednesday's town hall also addressed HBO Max's subscriber drop, which was used to argue that all players in the streaming game should reevaluate the economics of their industry. The decline in subscribers was cited as a motivation for streamers' decisions to remove content from their platforms.