Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly looks to unload half of its music catalog

Music from Purple Rain, Casablanca, and Batman may soon be up for sale

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  June 22, 2023 | 11:52pm
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Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly looks to unload half of its music catalog
Warner Bros. 100 logo at the TCM Film Festival Photo: Charley Gallay (Getty Images for TCM)

Hours after Warner Bros. Discovery announced it had hired Space Jam: A New Legacy’s Al-G Rhythm to serve as an “A.I.” film management system and less than a day since it scared the bejesus out of film fans due to layoffs at TCM, WBD is making fans of American popular culture nervous. Per Variety, and first reported by Hits, WBD reportedly seeks to unload the rights to “slightly less than half” of its billion-dollar music catalog. The studio’s music assets include a wealth of historically significant classics, including the music to Purple Rain, Sweeney Todd, Batman, and the tune WBD uses as its studio fanfare, “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca. The catalog is currently locked into a multi-year deal with Universal Music Publishing.

Variety notes that some “cast a skeptical eye on the deal” because some of the music is old and “difficult to exploit” because the catalog mainly consists of film themes and cues, not so many full, licensable songs. Still, the news nevertheless feels apiece with Warner Bros. Discovery’s approach to cultural preservation.

Yesterday, the Three Musketeers, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, swooped into an emergency meeting with WBD CEO David Zaslav over the recent layoffs at Turner Classic Movies. Though they left “heartened and encouraged” by Zazlav’s reported love of classic film and TCM, many remain dubious. After all, unless you’re a shareholder, there hasn’t been much positive news out of Warner Bros. Discovery. With layoffs, restructurings, cancelations, and the writers’ strike, many expect more shoes to drop.

One of those shoes already did. Earlier today, The Hollywood Reporter announced that WBD signed a deal to use an “artificial intelligence” system to help with the greenlight process. THR writes, “The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams.”

We’d shed tears over the current state of Warner Bros., but in the immortal words of Al-G Rhythm, “There’s no crying in the Serververse!”

 
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