Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav Says Canceling Completed Projects Took 'Courage'

Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav gave himself a pat on the back on Wednesday for slashing budgets and throwing out completed movies. He spoke at the New York Times' DealBook Summit on Wednesday, saying that it took "courage" to make the cutbacks he has made over the last couple of years. That includes scrapping finished movies like Batgirl and Coyote vs. Acme, as well as mass layoffs and huge spending cuts.

WBD scrapped Batgirl and Scoob! Holiday Haunt in 2022 when it was practically finished and nearing its release date. It did something similar earlier this month with the Looney Tunes film Coyote vs. Acme, though instead of taking it as a complex type of tax write-off it is shopping that movie to other distributors. According to a report by Variety, the company took $2.9 billion worth of these write-offs in 2022, and Zaslav – who was reportedly paid $39 million for his work at WBD in 2022 – said that it was necessary to improve the company's finances. He said: "We decided that we had to have courage."

Zaslav said that these kinds of decisions were made after the company was already invested in these projects but with new estimations of their possible profits. Making an example, he asked the audience to suppose WBD had already spent $100 million producing a movie. He said: "The question is, should we take certain of these movies and open them in the theater and spend another $30 [million] or $40 million to promote them? And [the] Warner Bros. team and HBO made a number of decisions. They were hard. But when I look at the health of our company today, we needed to make those decisions. And it took real courage."

Discussing the canned movies, shrunken departments and mass layoffs, Zaslav used the phrase: "there are no sacred cows" to describe his decision-making philosophy. He also pointed out that WBD is still massively in debt despite these cuts, and may have to make more tough decisions in the future.

During the talk, Zaslav also claimed to have been on the side of the actors and writers throughout their labor strikes this summer. He reiterated his support for the WGA, saying they were "right about almost everything," and added that he had told the SAG-AFTRA negotiators: "I agree with a lot of what you're saying." Zaslav implied that he was one element within the AMPTP urging a deal with the unions the whole time.