As rival motion picture studios were becoming intoxicated on theatrical day-and-date releases tied to their streaming platforms during Covid, and big streamers like Netflix completely sidestepping wide theatrical releases, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav believed in the economics of the big picture.
Upon taking control of the new conglom last year, he immediately swiped away WarnerMedia’s pandemic plan of taking big pictures day-and-date on HBO Max. Zaslav believed that day-and-date ruined a film’s pantina.
Now rival streamers are coming around, and seeing the light preached by Zaslav. Amazon Studios in their billion dollar purchase of MGM returned to theatrical in a big way with the cinematic releases of Creed III and Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s Air. There’s also Apple which has Paramount releasing the Martin Scorsese movie Flowers of the Killer Moon and Sony handling their Ridley Scott epic Napoleon.
“I love the fact that (Amazon’s) Mike Hopkins and Andy Jassy are opening their movies,” beamed Zaslav today at the Warner Bros Discovery Max presser.
“The fact that Apple is doing it, is great.”
“We do international distribution for Amazon; we did it for Air and we did it for Creed III,” Zaslav added.
“Here’s to movies in theaters!,” the CEO added, “Let’s not rush to put them on the platform.”
“We saw the data, we saw two years of data of putting movies on streaming, we had no agenda,” said Zaslav who says a pic’s best economics is going through a windows system, with a further boost on streaming after a theatrical release.
Zaslav praised the historical significance of moviegoing in America; the preciousness and magic of a big screen release that audiences share together, as well as a theatrical release’s cultural impact.
“We believe at Warner Brothers Discovey, there’s a lot of content you watch alone, but it’s really powerful when you go into theaters.”