Credit: Warner Bros.Warner Bros. Discovery has been going through a very public, and very controversial, switch-up for some time now.
Fans were caught off guard by the news that Warner Bros. and Discovery Media would be merging into one studio and again by the announcement that everything would be merging into the newly named “Max” streaming service as they removed the iconic “HBO” title. CEO David Zaslav has since become a controversial figure in the film industry, even being booed while giving a commencement speech at Boston University back in May. Students demanded the CEO “pay your writers” in response to the still-ongoing WGA writers’ strike that started at the beginning of May.
Warner Bros. has brought on two new studio chiefs, Michael DeLuca and Pam Abdy, to turn the production studio around amid its ongoing struggles to maintain its status as a top studio. The new team seems excited at the prospect, coming over from the former MGM Studios with a new focus for what films they want to greenlight and how they’ll address theatrical versus streaming releases. They inherited an already decent lineup of movies, with Greta Gerwig’s Barbie debuting this summer and the long-awaited Beetlejuice 2 already in production.
In the midst of all this, however, Zaslav has continued to make unpopular decisions, including his recent decision to layoff several leaders for TCM, or Turner Classic Movies. The layoffs included “executive VP and general manager Pola Changnon; senior VP of programming and content strategy, Charles Tabesh; VP of brand creative and marketing Dexter Fedor; VP of enterprises and strategic partnerships Genevieve McGillicuddy, who also served as the director of the annual TCM Film Festival; and VP of studio production Anne Wilson.”
The individuals were responsible for curating lineups, filming intros and outros, and creating original shows, documentaries, and other content surrounding American cultural history. Several big filmmakers, including Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, personally spoke with Zaslav regarding the layoffs and the future of TCM, with a later statement explaining they were “encouraged” by the conversation.
Zaslvas has upset the animation industry, the WGA and the DGA, graduating students, several iconic filmmakers, and thousands of other people with his confusing approach to operating Warner Bros. Discovery. While his studio chiefs work to bring Warner Bros. back to the top, he’s hurting the studio’s reputation and possibly its future. It’s already on tenuous ground from various issues during Covid, and Zaslav’s recent moves may sink the studio even as he thinks it’s saving it.
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