Warners Losses And “Superman” Hopes

A piece on the recent woes of Warner Bros. Pictures over at Puck News has gone into the losses and how success for the upcoming “Superman” film may be essential to the studio’s survival.

David Zaslav’s debt-laden Warner Bros. Discovery has been slashing costs all over, but not so much at Warner Bros. Pictures where studio co-chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy have taken big gambles on auteur-driven features with overly generous budgets of late. Gambles that don’t appear to be paying off.

The “Joker” sequel was the first, a $200 million budgeted film that didn’t test screen and led to big losses for the studio.

Then came Bong Joon Ho’s just released “Mickey 17” which the outlet says did test screen – badly. Their source claims Warners had come up with an alternative cut that actually tested ten points higher, but Bong has the final cut and got his version released. The result is that the $118 million budgeted film is reportedly expected to miss its break-even mark at the box-office by around $100 million.

There’s also Ryan Coogler’s period vampire tale “Sinners” which they indicate went over budget and apparently needs to open to around $50-60 million. Paul Thomas Anderson and Maggie Gyllenhaal also have costly original films (ie. $100M+) on the way.

For a while there have been rumors that De Luca and Abdy may be out at Warners, though Zaslav’s reps have denied it. This report suggests either current DC Studios co-chair Peter Safran, or someone new, could be the ones to take over. The Insneider also ran a similar report the other day.

What is clear is that Gunn’s “Superman” is being seen as make or break film for the DC franchise and the studio overall – Puck’s source claiming “there is genuine fear that the studio will go the way of Fox” if it doesn’t.

Head over to Puck News for the full piece which goes into much more detail.

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