Changes at senior levels within Warner Bros are announced, following a disappointing year at the global box office.
Warner Bros Discovery, under the stewardship of its current boss David Zaslav, has endured a difficult few years. Zaslav’s ruthless costcutting has led, infamously, to the abandonment of completed feature films as tax write-offs to improve the short term bottom line. His tenure at the top of the company has been personally financially very rewarding for the man. For the company around him, things appear to have been a little more taxing.
The latest round of consolidation and cutbacks concerns two faces behind the scenes. Andrew Cripps was the international distribution chief for the studio, while Josh Goldstine oversaw its marketing. Both have now departed at the same time.
In a statement from the chairs of Warner Bros Motion Picture group – Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy – it was explained that “in building for the future, we have made the decision to realign our business unit with a singular global operation at its center to offer greater alignment for all our team members in the years ahead.”
To translate that from corporate talk into words that actual human beings use on a regular basis, the company is bringing distribution under one person. Jeff Goldstein, who oversaw distribution in the States, is now responsible for the planet.
Global marketing meanwhile is now temporarily under Dana Nussbaum and Christian Davin.
All this comes after the studio had a difficult year at the box office. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did especially well in America, but franchise movies Furiosa and Joker: Folie A Deux both fell well short of expectations, in spite of the strength of both pictures. Then there was the odd handling of Clint Eastwood’s Juror #2 as well.
There’s still surprise being reported across the Hollywood trades for the changes, not least given the pretty impressive track record of the departees in very difficult circumstances.
Still, this is ruthlessness of modern day Hollywood, and the changes are coming into effect right about now.
David Zaslav, meanwhile, took home nearly $50m in earnings from 2023 alone. That would have paid for Jurior #2 and still left change to actually release it properly.
