UPDATED: Scorsese and Spielberg issue joint statement about TCM "emergency call" with David Zaslav

Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson threw a little directorial star power in support of their favorite TV network today, with IndieWire reporting that the big-name trio held an “emergency call” with Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav over the fate of classic movies channel TCM. The network, which is one of the numerous channels lucky enough to toil under Zaslav’s cost-cutting eye, was hit with layoffs this week, including the termination of Genevieve McGillicuddy, whose duties included directing the annual TCM Film Festival—an event that Spielberg is an especially vocal participant in.

All three directors have been extremely effusive about TCM in the past, with Scorsese noting that it’s pretty much always on in the background when he’s editing his films. Spielberg, meanwhile, has lent tons of time and energy to the channel, appearing in numerous documentary shorts and stumping for it—really, the last place on regular TV where older movies are still in regular rotation—at every opportunity. And Anderson has been similarly enthusiastic as both a proponent, and, now, a defender, once referring to the channel as “holy ground.”

Warner Bros. and Zaslav laid off large chunks of the leadership at TCM yesterday, including general manager Pola Changnon, who’s been with TCM for 25 years; all told, the company wiped a decent chunk of the people responsible for curating TCM’s film library from the books pretty much all at once. Which means that Zaslav (who’s gone on the record in the past as a regular TCM viewer himself) finds himself in the uncomfortable position of slashing budgets at a channel beloved by America’s most famous directors, at the same time that he’s trying to court those directors back into the fold—after Warner Bros. massively pissed numerous cineastes off by its unilateral lockdown-era decision to push most of its cinematic output to streaming.