David Zaslav pockets $606 million as he bids buh-bye to Warner Bros.

A recent filing with the Securities And Exchange Commission has revealed (per Variety) that while the rest of us were grumbling about crap like monopolies and the now very real possibility of a Flash/Sonic The Hedgehog movie, Zas pocketed a cool $606.1 million from his holdings and equity awards as the merger closed on October 6. (Under the merger agreement, shareholders were entitled to $31 per share plus ticking fees when the market closed on Tuesday. WBD shares have since been delisted.) The filing shows that the executive sold shares valued at $224 million in tandem with the Paramount Skydance acquisition, while he netted an additional $381 million from stock options whose value was unlocked by the acquisition. (Or, to put it in terms people who are not our betters might understand, “Scrooge McDuck pocket money.”)

Before the “A Skydance Corporation” paint could dry on the Warner Bros. water tower (where Wakko Warner could be heard muttering, “Revenge is a dish best served cold,” because now he can), Zaslav and several of his fellow executives walked away with a hefty payday. WBD’s outgoing chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels, chief revenue and strategy officer Bruce Campbell, international chief Gerhard Zeiler—who may yet have a future in Austrian politics, according to Deadline—and J.B. Perrette, WBD’s former games/streaming honcho and Skydance’s spankin’-new chief business officer and co-chair (for Skydance TV and Skydance DTC), all stood to cash in on an idiotic amount of money as the merger closed this week. (And yes, we know the “revenge/cold” line is really from Eugène Sue’s serialized novel Memoirs Of Matilda (1840-1841); we all like fun facts.)

All outlets reporting on this news are kindly reminding everyone that Zaslav went out of his way to increase equity among WBD employees during his movie-stashing, layoff-doing tenure. In fact, compared with the two preceding versions of Warner Bros., he doubled the number of employees eligible to hold equity in the company, and The Hollywood Reporter says that these workers likely also benefited from the merger. It probably goes without saying, however, that their gains pale in comparison to the staggering sums their executives took home, and a little equity cash likely won’t comfort employees staring down the barrel of the corporation’s inevitable post-merger layoffs.