Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) plans to focus on franchise films and theatrical premieres as it continues to restructure, said president and CEO David Zaslav after announcing the media giant’s third quarter results.
Mentioning company properties including Superman, Harry Potter, Lord Of The Rings and House Of The Dragon, Zaslav said that in film and television, “We’re going to have a real focus on franchises…the movies that are understood and loved everywhere in the world.”
Zaslav added that as the company continues to restructure six months after Warner and Discovery closed their merger, “We’ve learned what doesn’t work. One [thing] is direct to streaming movies - collapsing a motion picture window into a streaming service. The movies that we launch in the theatre do significantly better and launching a movie direct to streaming has done almost nothing for HBO Max in terms of viewership, retention or love of the service.”
Regarding WBD’s streaming plans, Zaslav revealed that the US launch of the combined Discovery+/HBO Max streaming service has been brought forward from summer of 2023 to spring. The combined service will expand to Latin America later next year and Europe and Asia after that.
HBO Max itself is set to be relaunched next spring as a premium and ‘ad-lite’ streaming service.
Zaslav’s comments came on the heels of third quarter financial results for WBD that were adversely affected by declines in pay TV and advertising revenues.
Overall, the media giant reported revenues of $9.8bn, down 8% on the previous year’s third quarter, and a net loss of $2.31bn. Loss per share was 95 cents, compared to income of 24 cents for the third quarter of 2021.
WBD’s studio segment – which includes Warner Bros, DC and New Line – had third quarter revenues of $3.09bn, down 5% on 2021’s third quarter. Driving the company’s theatrical performance for the quarter were DC League Of Super-Pets, Don’t Worry Darling and second-quarter release Elvis.
On the direct-to-consumer side, WBD ended the quarter with 94.9m global subscribers across its Discovery+, HBO and HBO Max services, an increase of 2.8m from the total at the end of the second quarter. Most of the growth came in international markets, with the company’s international count rising by 2.3m to 41.4m while the US tally edged up 500,000 to 53.5m.
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