Hopeful earners Dune, The Matrix: Resurrections and Space Jam 2 all underperformed at the box office, and time had come for a course correction.ĭuring a report that sometimes played like a sweaty all-is-well press conference out of Succession, Zaslav pushed the headline of theatrical releasing’s comeback in no uncertain terms.
Upwards of a dozen big-ticket titles – including The Suicide Squad, Cry Macho and In the Heights – materialized in America’s living rooms free of additional charge, an obvious ding to theatrical exhibition meant to funnel viewers into the streaming way of the future.ģD-chess-brained thinking yielded to good old common sense as executives noticed that it’s difficult to get people to pay for what they already have at home. The company caused a stir with “Project Popcorn”, an unorthodox business model under which they released their 2021 slate of films to HBO Max on the same day they hit theaters. The decision to demolish the HBO Max brand and start over on the vacant lot it will leave behind comes as a shock to industry observers, who have watched as Warner went all in on streaming during the pandemic’s housebound early days. Rumors of staff layoffs and series cancelations swirled until the bomb was finally dropped by Warner/Discovery’s CEO, David Zaslav, during a second-quarter earnings report last Thursday: in 2023, HBO Max and Discovery Plus would be combined into a single entity, ideally with a name that doesn’t sound like a brand of batteries. HBO Max subscribers then began combing the library and noticed that a handful of the original films produced for the platform had been quietly removed the Seth Rogen vehicle American Pickle, for one, now exists only as a $3.99 rental from iTunes.
First, the studio announced plans to permanently shelve an already-shot Batgirl movie to the tune of an estimated $90m loss, a puzzling move explained in an official statement as symptomatic of a larger shift in company doctrine away from streaming, though more obscure imperatives of tax accounting surely played a role as well.
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