Warner Bros. Movie Heads Are Burning Cash, and Their Boss Is Losing Patience
Shortly after Joker: Folie à Deux opened in October, Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav summoned the co-leads of his movie studio to company headquarters in New York. The sequel to the 2019 smash hit Joker had been a critical and commercial disaster, grossing just $208 million, about one-fifth what the original took in—despite costing nearly four times as much to make.
In a closed-door meeting, Zaslav railed against the performance of the film, which studio heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy had supervised from start to finish after joining Warner Bros. in 2022. Zaslav also decried the mounting costs of the studio's upcoming releases, according to people familiar with the matter who weren't authorized to speak publicly. A spokesperson for Warner Bros. disputed this characterization, calling the meeting 'a straightforward Joker 2 postmortem and a constructive conversation on the slate.'
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