Warner Brothers’ Grand Design
It’s simple but complicated.
AT&T spun off Warner Brothers when they setup the merger with Discovery. However, they still own a great deal of Warner Brothers Discovery stock.
They want Warner Brothers sold to another company. Zaslav’s job is to get it ready for that sale. Everything to do with the DC has to be viewed through that prism.
The first thing Zaslav had to do was trim the fat. So, he killed off what I’m going to call the Sarnoffverse. The previous regime’s plan had been to follow in Marvel’s footsteps even if those steps were leading off a cliff. They were going to create inclusive and diverse Latina Batgirl and Latina Supergirl and foist them on an unprepared and unsuspecting world. Zaslav killed that.
However, he would just as likely have killed a DCU that was headed in the right direction if that direction had $200+ million budget commitments.
You see the nice thing about DCU Chapter 1: Gods and Monsters is it’s cheap. Superman Legacy is the only thing that is going to be pricey in the next two years and even that is going to be held to around $180 million. The near-term stuff is all TV shows with ensemble casts and they won’t cost that much.
The rest of the Gunnverse theatrical releases are all in the blue-sky planning stages. They aren’t going beyond the planning stages until next year.
The important part of all this is NOT having things very interconnected. This is why you aren’t seeing the DC holy trinity team up of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman anywhere on the horizon. Gunn has been given the green light to go nuts on the cheap stuff like animated features and TV shows.
However, Warner doesn’t want things too interconnected. Sure, they are taking place in the same universe, but you can take or leave any individual movie or show.
They more or less have the same plans for Wizarding World.
They aren’t bothering with any Middle Earth project beyond the minimums needed to maintain their license. They feel, correctly that Amazon has poisoned that well and will continue to poison it for the foreseeable future.
All of this is geared to make Warner Brothers an attractive, maybe even a bargain buy.
So far as James Gunn is concerned, the big budget stuff comes later, or at least that is what he has been promised.
The potential buyers list isn’t too long. Amazon and Comcast is about it. Apple has the money but at this point I’ve come to the opinion that Apple TV is about as deep into media as they want to get. Their corporate culture strongly favors sticking with what they know. There might be some genuine interest in acquiring Hulu because it’s not too far outside Apple’s wheelhouse and doesn’t come with any studio commitments.
While I’m sure that Iger’s palms are itching at the thought of a sale of century taking place with him on the sidelines, the truth is Disney is in no shape to make this major of an acquisition.
Comcast has the money but they already own Universal as well as a major cable/internet company. Congress might balk. By default, Amazon is the most likely buyer. My skin crawls at the idea of them having free and unfettered access to the Lord of the Rings but I’ll try not to borrow trouble. There is always the chance of a foreign buyer.
This is basically a soft reboot of DC with no legacy commitment for the new owner to anything with the A-list characters. They can do what they want with Justice League with a clean slate.
Which is the big reason Henry Cavill had to go.
I’ll try for something more pop culture oriented next week. I promise.
Okay, I’m done here.
