Waxword: The budding Hollywood mogul is finding it harder than she thought to balance her allure with the demands of Wall Street.
One veteran Hollywood executive said Zaslav made the wrong move, specifically pointing to a celebration of Warner’s 100th anniversary party at the Hotel du Cap in Cannes, in which Air Mail’s Graydon Carter gave a silent speech during the strike. Had taken a deaf step. “It’s the most transparent drug-like addiction [to celebrity] I have seen that too,” said the executive.
The executive added: “Everyone was supporting him. Now the whispering around town is ‘What a clown.’
It started with the commencement address at Boston University on May 22, which should have been a fun, ego-boosting ordeal. But instead he was heavily criticized by the student body for his role in the Hollywood Writer’s Strike.
Then on May 23, a long-planned streaming strategy kicked off with the launch of Max, a bold branding change that brought Warner Bros.’s three Discovery brands — HBO, HBO Max and Discovery Plus — into one streaming platform. The jury is still out on whether Zaslav’s bid will work in Central America for HBO’s worth. But right out of the gate, he managed to anger the Hollywood creative community with the ham-handed move of grouping credits on the new platform together under all the “producers” on his team.
The Hollywood guilds were furious, with DGA president Leslie Linka Glatter calling it a “serious insult to our members and our union”. and Mardik Martin and producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff are all under a single “producer” category.)
bad luck. Two days later Zaslav flew to the Cannes Film Festival to throw a star-studded party at the luxurious Hôtel du Cap. This meant Zaslav’s coming-out party at the year’s hottest film festival, which was gleefully covered in the New York Times. And when movie stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and directors like Martin Scorsese showed up, it wasn’t so much a quiet complaint that the party was in bad taste as the strike brought the industry to a standstill. wrote Sean McCreesh in New York magazine: “Thousands of miles away from the writers’ strike that has paralyzed and polarized post-pandemic Hollywood, Warner Bros. celebrates its centennial… The rarefied rocky confines of Hotel du Cap-Eden-Roc out of Cannes.”
May be there is a bad call. Can happen with anyone. But things have taken a turn for the worse as the months have passed.
* On June 7, Zaslav was forced to fire his handpicked CEO of CNN, Chris Licht, following a disgraceful removal of the executive for failure to lead the news network at The Atlantic magazine and an employee revolt, in which it was apparent That Licht “lost the room” – the newsroom. The PR debacle took over the news cycle for several days.
* Over the weekend of June 16, the DC superhero film “The Flash” – a film that Zaslav personally gave his stamp of approval – bang at the box office, grossed just $55 million, well below even the most measured expectations. “Where DC?” Here comes the analysis of box office experts.
* Then on June 20, a new round of layoffs began, including sweeping cuts at TCM, the classic movie channel affiliated with the Warner Archive, beloved by moviegoers, cinephiles and classic movie buffs alike. The response was even more severe as Zaslav took the unusual step of appearing at the recent TCM Festival to talk about his love for the film with Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson. A damage control call with Spielberg, Scorsese, and the PTA took place on June 21 after the layoffs sparked online outrage.
* On top of all that, news leaked that HBO was in talks to license its content to Netflix, which by now was a serious rival, starting with Issa Rae’s “Insecure” and some of the music and movie library To sell the parts for cash.
It is becoming very uncomfortable for David Zaslav, who finally has in his hands the prize he has been coveting for so long, a legacy Hollywood studio.
“David Zaslav had a chance to come into the business and take over Lew Wasserman’s chair,” said the veteran Hollywood executive, referring to the former MCA-Universal mogul’s respected position in resolving labor disputes. “He could have gone into the room with the creatives and studio heads – say ‘I’m a fan of the creative community’ – and resolved it.”
But it’s been a rough journey ever since Zaslav managed to convince AT&T to merge Discovery’s cable empire with the famed Warner Bros. brand spun off from the telecom giant. From the outset, he needed to cut thousands of jobs in order to meet the $5 billion in cost savings needed to offset the huge debt burden that financed the deal.
And despite his outright support for Warners theatrical strategy, for supporting filmmaking in general, and for traditional Hollywood, Zaslav has managed to rub the creative community the wrong way again and again. From “Batgirl” star Leslie Grace to CNN star Christiane Amanpour to national treasure Martin Scorsese, the famously hottie Zaslav keeps stepping into the soup.
Why – you may ask?
“The real story is why Zaslav behaves the way he does,” said a longtime observer of Mogul. “He only wanted to get the Warner deal. He is sitting on this seat. He has proved himself by breaking something in his psyche. In his mind he is a transgressor of limits. That’s the way he thinks.”
Perhaps. But he still has to administer this great prize that he has won. Zaslav is torn between the demands of Wall Street – where WBD stock is suffering from the pressure of a $49.5 billion debt load – and his desire to become a lovable, old-fashioned Hollywood mogul, friend to the stars, habitual polo lounge.
A person with knowledge of his thinking said, “He really believes that for this company to be successful, you have to be a friend of the creative community, flag more films, be a vigorous champion of theatricality.” ” But this person agreed that Zaslav has had to deal with bad news recently.
“Coming one after the other, it’s easier to string because of time [bad news] Together,” adding: “It’s a complicated time for the writers’ strike.”
A Warner insider pointed out that even though the Chris Leach debacle was looming large, the company announced it would achieve cost-saving targets faster than expected, which increased stock 20%. (The stock has since gone back down.)
But optics are brutal. One thing is certain: Zaslav is in a position of his own doing and of his own choosing. And he will not find his way to success through more cuts. He will need some breaks and see some strategies work.
For the time being, though, he probably wants to hide out in the Hamptons and wait out the month.
