Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has commented on the future of the company’s entertainment business, saying he believes that some of its biggest franchises are “underutilized” and that this is actually one of the firm’s biggest growth opportunities. He made his point using an analogy about cookies.
During a speech at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology event, he singled out franchises like Harry Potter, DC franchises like Superman, Batman, and Joker, along with the fantasy franchises Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. He said these are franchises people around the world know and will spend time and money on, if they are deployed correctly.
“The good news for us, is it’s underused. We haven’t done a Superman in 14 years [note: Man of Steel was released in 2013 and Batman vs Superman came out in 2016. We haven’t done Lord of the Rings in a decade. We haven’t done Harry Potter in 12 years [note: the third Fantastic Beasts, set in the Harry Potter universe, came out in 2022],” Zaslav said. “It is as if we have the best cookie. But we haven’t been able to get it on the shelves yet. We might have the best cookie. But if you go to the grocery store, and it’s not on the shelf, you can’t create the value out of it.”
The Lord of the Rings live-action movie series is set to return in 2026 with a film tentatively titled The Hunt for Gollum, which brings back Andy Serkis to direct, with Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens–the architects of the Oscar-winning trilogy–signed on as executive producers. Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in the earlier film trilogies, has said he would return, while Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) and Orlando Bloom (Legolas) have expressed interest in coming back.
As for Harry Potter, a new TV series is on the way that re-tells the stories of all seven books, and an open casting call for Harry, Ron, and Hermione just began this week. Zaslav said if the show is a success, it could lead to a decade’s worth of new content for Max.
And then Superman–new DC Studios boss James Gunn recently wrapped production on Superman, which stars David Corenswet as the titular Man of Steel. The film is due out in July 2025 and hopes are high for it to be a success and potentially lead to sequels and spinoffs.
To extrapolate from Zaslav’s cookie comment, some might see this as an attempt to “milk” some of WBD’s biggest franchises, a process that hasn’t gone over well for other big companies. From the sound of it, it seems Zaslav is keen to try to create a Marvel/Star Wars kind of situation where new releases in major franchise come out on a regular cadence. Disney, which owns those franchises, later owned up to over-saturating the market with content and is scaling back to a “less is more” approach.
None of this should be a surprise, though, as Zaslav has spoken time and again about focusing on franchises to make money, and his comments today are in line with that way of thinking.
Zaslav went on to say Warner Bros. Discovery is the “greatest creative storytelling company in the world,” and he feels confident about the future because “the best content wins.”
“At our core, we’re just a storytelling company. That’s all we are,” the executive said, pointing out that some of the company’s competitors are in other businesses like retail and mobile phones. But Warner Bros. Discovery, Zaslav said, is first and foremost a storytelling company. “Storytelling is the only business we’re in. We do it at CNN. We do it at HBO and Max. We do it at Warner Bros. Television. We do it in free-to-air. We do it with our programming around sport. We tell stories. It gives us a real focus,” he said.
Zaslav became CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery when Warner Bros. and Discovery merged in 2022. Since he’s joined the company. Warner Bros. Discovery made a number of drastic moves to cut costs, including scuttling nearly finished films, like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, and mass layoffs.
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