Coming off a hot streak in 2025, Warner Bros. has cooled off significantly this year. The big-budget flops The Bride! and Supergirl, underperformers Mortal Kombat II, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, and Evil Dead Burn, and forgotten They Will Kill You have cured WBD CEO David Zaslav’s senioritis, forcing him back to work. The Warner Bros. head is supposed to be taking a golden parachute ride out of the water tower this summer, clearing the way for David Ellison’s Paramount to move in and start laying off the remaining WB workforce. Instead, with the merger on ice, Zaslav is stuck doing, blech, CEO stuff, such as talking to shareholders. Thanks to those pesky state attorneys general, who have, like, totally ruined his summer, Zaslav was forced to answer investor questions on WBD’s Q2 earnings call, per Deadline, defending his flailing slate with a Clerksian, “I’m not even supposed to be here today,” energy.
Nevertheless, though the first half of the year was a bust, down 11% from last year (thanks in no small part to WB allowing its four-decade-long relationship with the NBA lapse), the studio still has plenty of projects in the pipeline, including a whole universe of movies to follow Supergirl. Zaslav insists Supergirl‘s failure to launch has had no lasting impact on the Superman sequel, Man Of Tomorrow. Never fear, Zaslav has enough employee monitoring software to tell shareholders that he’s seen pictures from production of the sequel “that looked amazing.” He also praised director James Gunn for “working 16, 18 hours a day,” even on his birthday. If Zaslav has to work this summer, so, too, does Mr. Gunn.
Admittedly, the studio’s 2025—with its Oscar winners, blockbusters, and Oscar-winning blockbusters, such as One Battle After Another, A Minecraft Movie, and Sinners—is a tough act to follow. But Zaslav, presumably in his finest Tommy Bahama, reminding him of the summer he’s supposed to be having right now, assures his investors that he has a “robust pipeline,” with a long-delayed Batman sequel, another DC movie based on a C-tier character, Clayface, and all those Lord Of The Rings movies no one asked for, coming soon. Still, while the company is “a little light on tent poles” at the moment, Zaslav assures listeners of the earnings call that WB’s reskinned Boss Baby, The Cat In The Hat, is on the way, and so too is Practical Magic 2, which Zaslav hopes will repeat Devil Wears Prada‘s success. Now, if you’ll excuse him, David Zaslav has a heroic amount of sunscreen to smear on his nose.
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