Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav On Rumored Merger Talks: “We Are Not For Sale”

Refresh for more: The top brass at Warner Bros Discovery held a company-wide town hall Wednesday over Zoom in which they laid out the current state of the company and the industry, acknowledging the hard times amid a slew of cost-cutting and layoffs and emphatically addressing merger rumors with CEO David Zaslav exclaiming, “We are not for sale, absolutely, not for sale.”

This is according to sources on the Zoom. While the CEO didn’t specifically address which company he was referring to, the assumption by many was that he was referring to Comcast.

“We have the strongest hand in the industry,” Zaslav told employees, according to sources. “We have everything we need to be successful to be the biggest entertainment media company in the world.”

Sources said the meeting, which lasted about 75 minutes and stretched across all of WBD’s workforce, was led by Zaslav, who introduced division heads HBO & HBO Max chief content officer Casey Bloys, Warner Bros Television Group chair Channing Dungey and Warner Bros Motion Picture Group toppers Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy.

The meeting was an instrumental one for Zaslav, indicative of his philosophy when it comes to breaking down silos in the Warner Bros Discovery empire. This is something that didn’t occur during the previous WarnerMedia regime; specifically when it came to all divisions working together to ride herd on J.J. Abrams big half billion development deal cohesively.

Zaslav indicated how the industry was going through a tough time, and emphasized that many should have patience.

De Luca and Abdy talked about the confidence of the feature slate, while Zaslav noted that the plan is to release 15-20 theatrical titles of all genres.

On the TV side, Dungey showed clips, and said there’s a commitment to be the top supplier for HBO Max. The key to success in Dungey’s division is an independent mindset and continuing to work with third parties that deliver great content.

Bloys discussed the Netflix sub-loss change in the industry and how that forced everyone in the streaming industry to assess how money should be made. That seismic event has prompted WBD execs to make hard decisions to take content off the HBO Max platform. Note, this wasn’t a willy nilly move by HBO suits, but just a means to respond to the will of consumers and what they’re watching. The plan is to reinvest in those shows that people are watching or new ones which they’d be prime to watch. The removal of content on HBO Max in way indicated that there’s a refinement in content strategy.

On the lighter side in the town hall, Zaslav mentioned toward the end he’ give a vest to everyone (he loves his Warner Bros. Discovery vests), which created a pandemonium in the chat with people asking how they could get one.

WBD has been in restructure mode since Discovery’s $43 billion acquisition of WarnerMedia closed in April, when the new company began working toward achieving at least $3 billion in cost savings post-deal. That is coming via workforce reductions across all divisions, as well as via the combining of operations including most significantly the eventual merging of HBO Max and Discovery+.

Most recently, about 30% of the company’s ad-sales staff were laid off, with more expected over the coming weeks; WBD has a combined workforce of about 40,000.

WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels said earlier this month that the company already as achieved between $2 billion-$3 billion of actual cost savings has been recorded, with the rest due in 2023.

On the content side, several international divisions have been reworked, while stateside divisions like Warner Bros Pictures and the TNets have undergone leadership changes.

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