‘Batgirl,’ David Zaslav and the End of Streaming Evangelism in Hollywood (Variety)

https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/batgirl-david-zaslav-1235335069/

Warner Bros. Discovery’s decision to scrap the completed DC Comics film that was bound for HBO Max marks the boldest example of Old Media economic rigor being applied to contemporary content spending.

David Zaslav, CEO of the newly reconfigured media conglomerate, didn’t even mask his bewilderment at the decision-making process and optimistic profit projections made by the previous WarnerMedia regime. Zaslav and other executives spoke Aug. 4 during WB Discovery’s second-quarter earnings conference call with Wall Street analysts that ran 95 minutes as executives spoke with candor about the new world order.

Zaslav and WB Discovery chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said more than once, with palpable exasperation, that there was simply no business case to be made for spending $90 million on a DC Comics movie designed to skip theaters and go straight to HBO Max.

“We’ve looked hard at the direct-to-streaming business,” Zaslav said. “And our conclusion is that expensive direct-to-streaming movies in terms of how people are consuming them on the platform, how often people go there or buy it or buy a service for it and how it gets nourished over time is no comparison to what happens when you launch a film in the theaters. And so this idea of expensive films going direct-to-streaming, we cannot find an economic case for it. We can’t find an economic value for it.”

The emphasis on how “Batgirl” could – or could not – possibly recoup its costs was the equivalent of a bucket of ice water being thrown on the media and entertainment sector. Zaslav has already vowed that he’s not trying to “win the spending wars” as he made the pre- and post-merger rounds around the AT&T spinoff transaction with Discovery.
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Five years later, there’s more content available than ever before but the path to seeing a return on movies and TV shows that are less than “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Stranger Things”-level smash hits is murkier than ever. It’s no secret that executives at Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and others are looking at the worst-performing shows in their vast streaming libraries. There’s growing realization that there’s a financial imperative to consider some form of syndication licensing for little-watched shows in the hopes of seeing some kind of return by selling it to an outside buyer.