Walter Hamada Is Done
Today in completely expected news. Walter Hamada has been fired as the head of DC films.
I was wondering why Zaslav hadn’t axed him yet. Now I know.
Black Adam is going to underperform. Either the shill media hasn’t been paid enough to give good reviews or they are mad enough at David Zaslav to not care about reprucsussions… This time.
Walter Hamada was clearly hired in a panic.
He was a producer at Warner’s subsidiary New Line Cinema for ten years. His track record there wasn’t terrible. That said it wasn’t exceptional either. He oversaw a string of horror films in the 2010s. The Conjuring, Conjuring 2, and Annabelle and the like. As you can see from this list Hamada was basically producing the same film over and over again. Sort of like the Shannon Tweed films in the 1990s that had names like Indecent (Noun) and Naked (Verb).
From a financial perspective, the studio had every reason to be happy with him. For a budget of $20 million, Hamada would deliver a worldwide gross of $300 million. They weren’t that great but no one in the history of Hollywood ever complained about something like that. “If the cash is there, we do not care.”
He genuinely hit the big time with this formula when he produced, It, and It Chapter 2. On a combined budget of $110 million, he delivered a combined gross that was over a billion. Making him officially a somebody in Hollywood.
He got the big job at Warner because he had a win with Shazam!. However, it should be noted, that this movie’s success was nowhere near his usual level. It only took in $365 million against a budget of $100 million. Absolutely a hit but nowhere near Marvel territory.
It was pretty far from flawless. I have made my own feelings plain over what was done with the OG Captain Marvel character elsewhere.
Nonetheless, Warner had to hire someone after the bloodbath over Josstice League was cleaned up and the heads were rolled into the garbage dumpster. Walter Hamada unquestionably had success in the lesser genres and could even be reasonably accused of having a big win with Shazam!
Even if that movie got the character of Billy Batson completely wrong. However, I can blame the medium talent, Geoff Johns, for most of that. Although, it should be noted he did nothing at all to defend the character’s integrity. He just turned those things over the comic book guy on his staff.
Regardless, he had exactly the resume that Ma Bell was looking for. He could deliver huge wins on tiny budgets.
For the most part Hamada was an unimaginitive but obeidiant servant of Woke As Fuck Ann Sarnoff. He did everything she told him to, no matter how bad an idea it was. Race swap Superman? No problem boss. Hire JJ Abrams to do for DC what he did for Star Trek and Star Wars? You’re a genius!
He might have been forgiven for these things but it was what he did on his own that sealed his fate. He sold off the revenues for Joker. That is usually a chump’s bet for the buyer but every now and then the dark horse finds the inside lane and comes in first. And the bookie who sold the layoff bet goes to the cleaners. When Joker hit it out of the park, Hamada cost Warner Brothers a billion dollars when most it needed a billion dollars. He was done then.
He was just being kept around to take the blame for the next big loss. Black Adam is going to be it.
Okay, I’m done here.
