Some longtime Warner Bros. executives expressed frustration that Mr. Zaslav wasn't considering their views in strategy discussions and was flirting with potential replacements. His mentality, they said, can be summed up as: Can't you crank out just hits?
Mr. Zaslav wants to use more statistics and research to determine what shows and movies the company should make, he said in a memo to employees on Monday. "As we build this new company," he wrote, "we need to be guided by data and insights to understand what's working and what's not."