In case you don't know by now, David Zaslav is the CEO of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), and has wasted little time making more enemies than friends in a number of genres. Less than a month after cancelling a "Batgirl" live action movie with Leslie Grace and Michael Keaton, and a holiday themed sequel to last year's CGI driven "S.C.O.O.B.", Zaslav and his assistants have pulled out the pruning shears in different departments at both WB and Discovery Networks.
Among the cuts announced this week were movies and/or series currently streaming on HBO Max, such as Infinity Train and a Sesame Street talk show spin-off starring Elmo. As of today, you can add Young Justice to the list.
It was announced that Young Justice will not be returning for a 5th season, although as of now, the other DC animated series, Harley Quinn, which began streaming season 3 a couple of weeks ago, is "safe" for now. Both shows have LGBTQ+ themes and loyal fan bases. DC has just launched a miniseries that was meant to provide a bridge between seasons 4 and the now-cancelled season 5 of Young Justice, and has another Harley Quinn miniseries spun from the HBO Max show set to start in October.
Zaslav is a numbers guy, and according to reports, isn't too fond of inclusive representation. That does not mean he is completely homophobic, though one wonders how much longer Harley will stick around, considering its subject matter. The previously cancelled movies are being written off for tax purposes, according to industry reports, which is meant to appease WBD's shareholders.
If that last part sounds familiar, consider what WWE has done since current co-CEO Nick Khan signed on 2 years ago. Roster cuts were made with no regard to storylines, a la soap operas, with the salaries redirected to other departments, although some of those cuts have since been reversed.
With the merger of HBO Max & Discovery+ set to be finalized next year at this time, there are understandable fears that it will look more like a Discovery channel than anything under the Warner banner, and it could cost WBD subscriber dollars. In other words, it's time to rein in Zaslav's reckless approach. Otherwise, it's going to get worse before it gets better.
7 comments:
"Zaslav is a numbers guy, and according to reports, isn't too fond of inclusive representation."
That's an understatement. This guy pulled several animated shows from HBO Max, supposedly as a cost-cutting measure, but as an added bonus, this way he doesn't have to pay their creators (many of whom were diverse) residuals, and he did this without telling anybody, including the creators of these shows. Stay classy, Zaslav.
His plan apparently is that he doesn't think that people tune into HBO Max for kids' programming, so he's planning to basically eschew kids and family shows from the service. Debatable, but sure; however, the least he could've done is let the viewers know where the shows he yanked were going to go as well as where future kids' projects will be going.
Furthermore, he's been laying off execs left and right, mostly POC, and replacing them with old white business dudes. He laid off four OWN execs, all of whom were African American, but kept on the one white exec. As Gomer Pyle would say: "Surprise, surprise, surprise!".
Finally, he's recently added CNN+ programming to HBO Max, with the caveat that the channel's perspective will be moving further to the right; not necessarily a bad thing if we were talking about the sane right, but of course the guy who blessed the world with "Here Comes Honey Boo-Boo" seems to want to appeal to the crazy fringe right: the recently departing Brian Stelter, who's been critical of former Pwesident Twump, clearly saw the writing on the wall and got gone while the getting was good.
Hoo-boy! The buzz is that this guy's dirty doings are burning A LOT of bridges in the entertainment industry. A lot a lot. As a fellow blogger/content producer on Tumblr noted: This can't blow up in Zaslav's smug face fast enough.
P.S.: Apparently David Zaslav's canceling of so many specifically female/POC-skewing projects at Warner-Discovery may have "Dampened diverse and inclusive programming" enough to get Warner-Discovery in trouble under Federal Anti-Trust Merger Enforcement Laws.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving clown.
David Zaslav is another Republican douchebag who ruins everything that he touches. He's the Donald Trump of entertainment. Zaslav is so bad he makes AT&T look good.
I'm subscribed to HBO Max. I'm not subscribed to Discovery Plus. However, the sad fact is that I'll will likely be unsubscribing from the service once HBO Max and D+ combine into one because I don't like reality TV and I don't want to support a service that has Zaslav's stink all over it. Warner Media should just cut their losses and end this merger before things get any worse (if that's possible). Amazon, Dreamworks, Google, whatever company WB could merge with couldn't possibly be worse than Discovery.
So he is a right-leaning scum. Figures. I'd read that CNN itself intends on being neutral, just like the old days. Here's to hoping he gets tossed out the door before the final merger is official.
@Goldstar More like the Adolf Hitler of entertainment.
I bet he hates LGBTQ too.
If he did, Steven, he'd axe Harley Quinn, too, but that's safe for the moment. For current events' sake, let's refer to Zaslav as the Donald Trump of Discovery.
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