Tag Archives: David Zaslav

Ivory Aquino asks CEO David Zaslav to release Batgirl

Ivory Aquino
Photo: Cindy Ord (Getty Images)

Following the news that Warner Bros. has been hosting “funeral screenings” for the Batgirl film that was axed earlier this month despite being 90% completed, Ivory Aquino has spoken out about the HBO Max project’s shelving. Addressing a series of tweets to new CEO David Zaslav, the actor opens up about the emotional past few weeks for the DC project’s cast and crew.

“I’ve found myself not being able to talk about this ordeal with anyone,” she writes. “I realized that no one, apart from those involved with the film, would truly understand what we’re feeling. And talking about it with my castmates, I feel, might be akin to rubbing salt on a still-open wound.”

The Warner Bros. Discovery merger has led to drastic changes within the company, including numerous other projects getting canceled at HBO Max and existing original shows and movies getting pulled from the platform. Significant layoffs have also occurred.

“I can only endeavor to understand how one feels when tasked with tending to the bottom line like you have,” Aquino tells Zaslav. “I can’t even begin to imagine what one in your position goes through having such great responsibility to attend to. I do know and ask, with something like Batgirl that’s a product of our hearts and souls, that the little cogs not simply be seen as widgets whose fates are determined by an equation to benefit the bottom line. More than widgets, we are fellow human beings and artists who, when given the chance, can outperform the equation and multiply the bottom line exponentially.”

Batgirl was reportedly axed because it would have been cheaper to take a tax write-down on the project than to complete postproduction and give it a marketing budget. Aquino goes on to underline how the recent news cycle has increased the movie’s visibility without a flashy campaign, imploring Zaslav to reconsider his decision. Given that Batgirl was set to feature the return of Michael Keaton as Batman, it’s hard to imagine it needing a huge promotional push in the first place.

If Batgirl ever comes out, it also co-stars Leslie Grace, J.K. Simmons and Brendan Fraser. Read Aquino’s full statement on Twitter.



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Warner Bros. Discovery proposes “10 year plan” for DC

WB Studio Tour
Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer (Getty Images)

Can DC ever chart a course to navigate out of Marvel’s shadow? That’s been the question for the last 10 years (since the conclusion of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy). Newly crowned Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav thinks he has the answer, which is… the same thing the guys before him tried to do, basically.

“You look at Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman—these are brands that are known everywhere in the world,” Zaslav said on the infamous WB earnings call (per The Hollywood Reporter). “We have done a reset. We’ve restructured the business where we are going to focus, where there is going to be a team with a ten year plan focusing just on DC. We believe we can build a much more sustainable business.”

Oh, gee, a 10 year plan? Why didn’t anyone think of that before? It’s a strange bit of corporate gaslighting to pretend we weren’t all around for the attempted Zack Snyder-verse. Further, it’s not much of a “reset” when only one film (Batgirl) was canceled and the rest–which are all still tangled up in the Snyderverse to some degree–are going forward (even the dreaded Flash film).

“It’s very similar to the structure Alan Horn, [former Disney CEO] Bob Iger and Kevin Feige put together very effectively at Disney,” said Zaslav, as if copy-pasting from the MCU handbook worked for any of his predecessors. He may want to consider that Feige is someone that directors actually want to work for; the Marvel boss’ compassionate response to Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah after Batgirl was canned only makes Zaslav and DC look even worse in comparison.

But Zaslav is determined to “focus on quality” and not “release any film before it’s ready,” which sounds more like the baseline for the film industry than an innovative new strategy. “The objective is to grow the DC brand. To grow the DC characters,” he said. “But also, our job is to protect the DC brand, and that’s what we’re going to do.” DC fans will surely sleep better knowing this is the guy protecting their beloved heroes.

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“Genredoms,” “male skew,” and other dumb stuff from today’s HBO Max/Discovery+ merger

Image: Warner Bros. Discovery

After days of taking precision hatchet shots to the library of his own streaming service, HBO Max, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav went in for the kill today. Talking to investors, Zaslav revealed on a Q2 earnings call his plans to smoosh together HBO Max and Discovery+ into one big, mushy ball of content that absotively, posilutely, won’t have any Batgirl movies on it.

Let’s be honest: It’s never great, PR-wise, when the graphics or language from these sorts of earnings calls—which by their very nature boil all art and entertainment down into a thin slurry of financial credits and demerits to be fed into the ever-hungry maw of The Investors—make it out into gen-pop for wider discussion. But Zaslav’s presentation has come in for some extra special mockery online today, especially for a slide that purports to show the differences between the two streaming services that will now by bridged by their forthcoming unholy spawn.

HBO Max, we are told, is “male skew,” “scripted,” “lean in,” “appointment viewing,” and, of course, “home to fandoms.” Discovery+, meanwhile, is “female skew,” “unscripted,” “lean back,” “comfort viewing,” and “home of genredoms”—which we’re pretty sure is when a classic science fiction novel slaps on the ol’ sex jeans and gives you the Christian Grey treatment. The “fandom” vs. “genredom” thing is mostly inscrutable, but we get the sense that folks mostly wouldn’t have roasted the slide too badly if Zaslav hadn’t opened with the whole “male skew” versus “female skew” thing—especially since a) we can name any number of HBO Max shows with passionate female audiences (and vice versa for Discovery+), and, b), all the descriptors for Discovery+ seem precision-engineered to annoy the hell out of any passionate fans of pop culture, like, say, the people who genuinely care about your poor, bedraggled streaming service, David.

Zaslav also posted a slide of the various assets from the paired streaming services, including a “franchises” entry that includes Harry Potter, the DC Superhero films, and, of course, the 90 Day Fiancé Universe, a vast cosmology of TV products about marrying people in less time than most people spend with a toothbrush. (Wait, should we be changing out our toothbrushes more often?)

Which is mostly dumb, but not necessarily a bummer. But never fear: Zaslav had a slide for that, too. Specifically, he had one describing all the alleged money-losing sins perpetrated by his predecessors, including CNN+ (which has now also been absorbed into Discovery+). The humdinger, as it were, is this line item (emphasis ours): “Approved additional spend on projects with uncertain financial returns including Kids & Animation, CNN+, certain Turner originals, and select direct-to-HBO Max feature films.) God forbid a studio spend money on TV or films with “uncertain financial returns,” but, don’t worry: Zaslav has a solution. Here’s a quick tip, kids: If someone tells their investors they’re “restructuring” the “content portfolio” of your job, it’s probably time to get some cover letters prepped. The company’s CFO later confirmed on the call that a decent chunk of the company’s kids and animation projects were on the chopping block.

Amidst all the carnage, Zaslav and his team also laid out a timeline for the merge of the two services: We can expect them to relaunch as a single entity in Summer 2023, no name or price points announced. The hybrid service is expected to launch in both ad-free and ad-supported forms.



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Leslie Grace addresses the sudden cancellation of her Batgirl movie

Leslie Grace
Photo: Matt Winkelmeyer (Getty Images)

Among the hundreds of people affected by Warner Bros. Discovery’s shocking decision to cancel HBO Max’s Batgirl movie yesterday (even as it was reportedly 90 percent of the way to completion), few are as central, obviously, as star Leslie Grace. Singer-songwriter Grace—who had her breakout acting role in 2021 as one of the leads in Warner’s In The Heights—has, after all, spent quite a few months of her life at this point getting fake-beat-up in spandex in Scotland for the film, which was scheduled to come out on HBO Max after wrapping its initial filming back in March 2022. Observers have, thus, been pretty curious about what she had to say about the parent company’s move to shelve the movie indefinitely

Grace took the high road tonight, though, posting a message to Instagram this evening that was focused entirely on the people she made Batgirl with, rather than the not-especially appreciative overlords they technically made the movie for:

Querida familia! On the heels of the recent news about our movie “Batgirl,” I am proud of the love, hard work and intention all of our incredible cast and tireless crew put into this film over 7 months in Scotland. I feel blessed to have worked among absolute greats and forged relationships for a lifetime in the process! To every Batgirl fan – THANK YOU for the love and belief, allowing me to take on the cape and become, as Babs said best, “my own damn hero!”

Grace accompanied her post with a number of photos and videos from the film’s Scotland production, including videos of her serenading the camera while getting into costume, working with the film’s camera crew, and singing with her castmates. It’s all very positive, and very light on the “fuck you, Warner Bros. Discovery president David Zaslav.” Grace’s post comes not long after the film’s directors, Adil El Arbi and Bilall Falla, made their own social media statements about the cancellation, describing themselves as “saddened and shocked by the news.”



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