n Thursday, after the company reported its second-quarter 2022 earnings, which represent the first quarter of the combined Discovery-WarnerMedia company’s existence, a Deutschebank analyst asked David Zaslav about his decision to kill the HBO Max-exclusive “Batgirl.”
“The Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group has fantastic IP and a great history,” Zaslav said. “Between DC and the animation group, together with the entire Warner library, our ambition is to bring Warner back and produce great high-quality films. As we look at the opportunities that we have, broadly, DC is one of the top of the list for us. Look at Batman, Superman, Wonder-Woman, Aquaman, these are brands known everywhere in the world. The ability to drive those all over the world is a big opportunity for us.”
Zaslav said that the DC organization moving forward will resemble the strategy that drives Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.
“We have done a reset. We’ve structured the business,” Zaslav said. “There will be a team with a 10-year plan focusing just on DC. It’s very similar to the structure that Alan Horn and Bob Iger put together very effectively with Kevin Feige at Disney. We think we could build a long-term, much more sustainable growth business out of DC, and as part of that, we’re going to focus on quality. We’re not going to release any film before it’s ready… The focus is going to be, how do we make each of these films, in general, as good as possible? DC is something we can make better, and we’re focused on it now. We have some great DC films coming up. ‘Black Adam,’ ‘Shazam!,’ and ‘Flash.’ We’re working on all of those. We’ve seen them, and we think they’re terrific, and that we can make them even better. That’s what Mike [De Luca] and Pam [Abdy, Warner Bros.’ new motion picture heads] are doing.”