If you’ve been keeping up with the headlines this week, you know that the last several days have been a little crazy for the staff at HBO Max and Warner Bros. The revelation that the highly anticipated Batgirl movie was going to be shelved generated even more attention, criticism, and conjecture, despite the fact that a shift in approach regarding both production firms’ titles had been gently hinted at in previous weeks. New Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has come right out and said, “is something we think could be better,” implying that the decision to cancel the Batgirl movie was part of a larger effort to distance the studio from the Snyderverse, the studio’s attempt to replicate the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The true strategy and what is occurring with the DC Extended Universe in the next years were revealed today during the Warner Bros. Investors Call by Zaslav. In other words, we’ve started over. We have organised the company. A group working on a 10-year strategy for the District of Columbia will be formed. It’s quite close to the model Alan Horne, Bob Iger, and Kevin Feige used to great effect at Disney. We believe that with a focus on quality, we can create a DC-based firm with much longer-term, more sustainable development. No film will be released before it is completely finished.
The question that will be prioritised is, “How can we improve the quality of these movies overall?” Our current efforts are concentrated on enhancing DC. The future of DC movies is bright. The movies “Black Adam,” “Shazam,” and “The Flash.” All of those things are in the works. We have seen them, and while they’re great as they are, we know they can be improved upon. That’s what new Warner Bros. film executives Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy are up to. Zaslav stated, “with DC, the animation group, coupled with the full Warner catalogue, our aim is to bring Warner back,” referring to the WB material, during the Investors Call.
Probably what Zaslav has in mind is the fact that despite being one of the largest studios in the world, Warner Bros. has had less-than-stellar box office results with its recent offerings, particularly with its super-hero and Harry Potter franchises, which have been beset by a number of problems both on and off-screen. During the Investors Call, it was also announced that HBO Max and Discovery+ will be merging into a single streaming platform under a single worldwide brand. Customers of HBO Max frequently express dissatisfaction with the service’s features, thus the plan is to give equal weight to the quality and satisfaction of those customers and the experience they receive overall.
Reportedly, HBO Max is reducing the number of original films in order to place greater emphasis on the movie-watching experience. Naturally, this means that we can expect to hear a lot of news regarding forthcoming games, returning franchises, course corrections, and cherished titles that may wind up being axed as a result of all these announcements. What will come of the company’s audacious choice to completely pivot its approach to innovation and operations at this time is anyone’s guess.