Two weeks after showing off the future of their rebranded Max streaming service, David Zaslav and Warner Bros. embraced theatrical as they showed off their upcoming 2023 slate at CinemaCon in Las Vegas.
Zaslav made his debut at the movie theater trade show on Tuesday with a lengthy speech that earned plenty of applause from cinema execs, especially when he reaffirmed his company’s plans to never go back to the day-and-date releasing model that his predecessor, Jason Kilar, rolled out for all of Warner’s theatrical releases in 2021.
“We believe in full theatrical windows, we don’t believe in direct to streaming. We are in no rush to push films to Max,” Zaslav said. “When we partner with you and bring these movies to theaters and promote them, and later on we market them again and release them at home while you still have them in your theaters, and then when we put them on Max, they do better than any of our direct-to-consumer titles.”
Zaslav noted that at the time of the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, Warner only had six films on its theatrical slate. The studio will release 16 films in 2023 with plans to release 20 or more per year under new film group heads Pam Abdy and Michael De Luca. The CEO said that they are doing this not just for the sake of business.
“We have an obligation. There’s two movie theaters on every main street in the world…but a lot of those main streets haven’t reopened,” Zaslav said. “Our country is so divided. Your theaters are the only place where everybody comes. The phone goes off, the lights go out, we tell a story and it’s magic.”
At the center of their presentation was the summer one-two punch of the DC blockbuster “The Flash,” which is being screened to movie theater owners at the trade show, and “Barbie,” which got an extended sneak peek from star Margot Robbie and director Greta Gerwig. Warner’s distribution chiefs Jeff Goldsmith and Andrew Cripps even got into the spirit of “Barbie” by wearing pink suits and ties onstage.
Oprah Winfrey was also on hand with director Blitz Bazauwle to show the first look at a musical adaptation of “The Color Purple” and have a preview panel with stars Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks and Fantasia Barrino.
Warner is pinning its hopes on these films to lead a theatrical resurgence in its centennial year after a 2022 in which mixed box office results mingled with headlines about a bumpy merger with Discovery. The studio had one of the biggest hits of the year with “The Batman” ($369 million domestic) while “Elvis” became key to bringing older moviegoers back to theaters while earning multiple Oscar nominations.
The studio also landed the biggest talent signing of the year when “Guardians of the Galaxy” director James Gunn joined Warner as the co-head of DC Studios alongside Peter Safran, with plans to reboot the lucrative brand with a new cinematic universe.
But on the negative side, DC’s “Black Adam” failed to turn a theatrical profit last fall while the failure of “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” prompted the studio to take a different approach to J.K. Rowling’s Wizarding World, pivoting to a remake of the “Harry Potter” novels that will take the form of a seven-season streaming series.
The mixed results have continued so far in 2023, with DC’s “Shazam: Fury of the Gods!” grossing less than half of its predecessor with just $133 million grossed worldwide. More positive news came this past weekend as “Evil Dead Rise,” a film that pivoted from streaming to theatrical after the WBD merger, became a low-budget horror hit with a $23.5 million opening weekend against a $15 million budget.
