Peter Bart: David Zaslav’s “Gap Year” Is Ending At A ‘Psycho’ Moment For The Entertainment Industry
deadline.comDavid Zaslav is a busy man, but I think he would benefit from a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock. They had this in common: Facing cycles of disruption, each decided to call a “time out” to gain perspective and design new strategies.And both likely would have enjoyed their interaction.
As CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, Zaslav is the center of the storm as he comes to terms with what he views as “the new reality.” Confronted by stalemate on many fronts, Hitchcock, too, took his pause to restore order.“I was prepping Psycho in 1960 when it hit me that the game had changed but no one had set forth the new rules,” Hitchcock once told me. “The whole industry seemed to come to a halt.
After a long layoff I decided to radically cut costs, shoot my movie in black and white with a small TV crew and shift to entirely new locations.
Whatever the new budgetary constraints, I was ready to meet them.”His home studio, Universal, had decreed that Psycho would be a scary departure from the Hollywood norm.
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