Poor David Zaslav is going to have to make do with just $51m to get him through the next year, as per Warner Bros Discovery filings.
While the entertainment business contemplates how it’s possible to make money from movies at the moment, and while high profile filmmakers openly look to use AI tools to bring down costs (read: wages), it seems there are one or two people who are still managing to make ends meet.
Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav, for instance. He’s overseen a difficult tenure at the company, not least the moment that will follow him for all time where he opted to delete completed movies in exchange for a tax break.
His reward for becoming one of the most contentious CEOs of such a storied company? A pay rise. The Warner Bros Discovery compensation committee says of Zaslav and chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels that they “had exceeded expectations and over-delivered with respect to their respective strategic goals.”
As such, in these austere times, David Zaslav has been recompensed with a 4% pay increase, taking his 2024 earnings to just $51.9m. It’s going to be a struggle for him, obviously, and clearly he needs all of that money. He wouldn’t be able to get by with, say, $10m a year, leaving $40m extra for workers struggling elsewhere in the creative industries. The world has clearly got its priorities right.
Heck, put together the salaries of Zaslav and Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, and the pair can only scramble together $93m between them. Or, by means of comparison, the budget for Ryan Coogler’s movie, Sinners. I’m sure the world would far rather pay that kind of money to two people, as opposed to an individual, interesting piece of cinema that’s set to endure for decades.
Here’s hoping the pair of them get a lot more money next year. Would hate for them to have to look for a last packet of dried pasta in the cupboard.
