This week we were surprised by the news that bat girl will not be released theatrically or on streaming, and the sequel to Scooby! – 40%. Both projects have been confirmed to be unreleased and will remain in this limbo indefinitely, so from how everything is going, it’s clear that they don’t plan to release them even though they are. finished. This news was only the beginning of an odyssey that affects those who work for the company in all areas and the public as such. Uncertainty will be daily bread, at least for a while until everything calms down.
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A few hours after this shock, HBO Max users realized that several of the productions made specifically for this platform had disappeared. Among them is the remake The witches – 45%done by Anne Hathawayas well as the most recent Moonshot- 67%con Lana Condor there Cole Sprouse. In total, at least until this moment, there are six titles that have disappeared in seconds. This added to the cancellations has subscribers thinking the worst, and fans fearing for their favorite shows and movies.
From all that has been said, it’s clear to us that the decision came from above with the intention of saving money in this expensive merger of Warner Bros. with Discovery Channel, which is now known as Warner Bros. Discovery, and in what follows, which will be a complete restructuring. It had already been mentioned that something like this would happen last year, but the change started in April and only now is it starting to be felt. As reports indicate, the canceled projects budget of US$130 million is what the company will try to recoup.
WBD, an acronym under which Warner Bros. Discovery is known to attempt to pass the two films off as a tax cut in order to recoup the investment. This means that the studio can’t make any profit from them, so they won’t be able to sell or release them, which is also a sign that they’ll be left in the dark not to be seen. Canceling two completed films, incidentally belonging to well-known intellectual properties, is already something unprecedented. That a streaming platform is removing its original productions is something that hasn’t been heard either and it sounds crazy.
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This is another in a series of measures taken by Warner Bros. Discovery since their merger, including a slew of TV series cancellations, and that doesn’t seem to be the end as more drastic changes are on the way. The envelope shared rumors of mass layoffs, where it was mentioned that 70% of HBO Max employees could lose their jobs. This outlet reported that after the series of changes, which started a few months ago, many have started looking for new opportunities elsewhere because they don’t feel safe there.
Moreover, this new sense of study to reduce costs does not look good, and could be a sad reality in the future. The CEO David Zaslav he tried to save the company some $3 billion, an exorbitant amount that confirms that this is only the beginning of the restructuring that is taking place with the Warner Bros. merger. Discovery. Amid all of this, HBO Max could come out badly based on all the talk, and because of that air of trepidation surrounding this storyline.
In the first case of a corporate merger, Zaslav confirmed that between the two, they would spend a total of US$20 billion on content creation, far outpacing Netflix, Amazon and Disney. His plan was very ambitious and HBO Max was included because he wanted to expand the platform and reach several hundred million subscribers. At the same time, it was mentioned that he would also try to save US$3 billion by merging various business sectors.
However, not everything mentioned would be fulfilled. Apparently, there’s been a change of plans, which wouldn’t be new for the company that owns the DC film and TV franchise, and there are strong rumors that HBO Max has little time to live. It’s ironic, given that it’s considered by many to be a better streaming platform than Netflix, which has lost subscribers but no more worrying signs of its possible demise. Any series in circulation is in danger at the moment, and its customers know it, but it would be to reach a higher point in the restructuring that is taking place.
Apparently, the intention of its leaders is to have all possible content on a single platform which would become Discovery Plus. Not HBO Max, nor the name of HBO somewhere, but that of Discovery in this new facet. It’s a name that, no doubt, very few people associate with streaming, while HBO is a pay-TV titan. Just by hearing it, many easily associate its name with the quality of storytelling and production, which is perhaps something that has been in the interest of those involved in Discovery from the start.
It didn’t take long for this to be confirmed, not before finding new claims of David Zaslav which show that he is not paying attention when he speaks about the work of those who made the canceled films. In the recent investor report, shared on Thursday after Variety first reported, the CEO conspicuously omitted that he will seek a tax cut for films that won’t be released, and instead destroyed the work of hundreds people in the project with the following statement:
We’re not going to release a movie until it’s ready. We are not going to release a film to make a fourth and we are not going to release a film unless we believe in it.
In this way, the executive directs attention to something else, assuring that he never believed in these projects, as if investing 130 million dollars in two films was not important and that there is no had no work teams behind them, doing their best to carry these stories. at the cinema or via streaming. But the facts do not allow him to completely divert attention from reality, since in the same report it was revealed that the conglomerate, that is, the two companies together, lost a huge amount of silver.
Zaslav had mentioned that he would do his best to save the company $3 billion soon, and it now makes a lot of sense when it is revealed that the amount they lost in the first four months was $3.4 billion. With this information, we are back to where we started, which is the fact that they threw the movies in the trash and canceled many other projects for television, in order to lighten the load of what can be considered the one of the biggest losers in the game. . This failure has led the CEO to rethink things and there will be considerable changes in the company.
This change will certainly include HBO Max, since the same report confirmed what many assumed: WarnerMedia’s streaming platform will merge with Discovery’s into a single service. This is going to have a new name, which has not been confirmed as of yet. We also don’t know what the new pricing system will be or if it will have a very attractive plan like HBO Max had when it came here. Undoubtedly, HBO-like content would add interest, although we can’t say the same for Discovery-owned content. Other productions could be canceled in this restructuring, which will include a “10-year plan” for the future of the DCEU according to what Zaslav said. If it took this odyssey for the superhero franchise to finally find a plan to follow instead of tossing movies around haphazardly, with a heavy dose of controversy in between, we’ll find out later.
What’s left in DC are interesting characters and stories that engage audiences, but it’s still missing someone who has clear ideas and can not only organize them, but lead their team and get everyone on their toes. same wavelength. . The DCEU, or whatever it’s called, has a lot to offer, but it still can’t find who can bring out the best in the world of generally connected movie franchises.
Continue reading: Batgirl: the cancellation of the film provokes mixed reactions from fans