Warner Bros. Discovery Faces First Post-Honeymoon Earnings As Layoffs, Streaming Decisions Loom

deadline.com:

Warner Bros. Discovery is heading into a very important week. The company, whose regime just crossed the 100-days-in-office mark, reports its Q2 earnings Thursday, when CEO David Zaslav and his team are expected to lay out more concrete plans for the combined entity than they did on the Q1 earnings call, held just a couple of weeks after the $43 billion Discovery-WarnerMedia merger had been completed.

That could include more details about how the two companies’ streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery+, would be combined and under what name; about the company’s theatrical-streaming film strategy; and how a promised $3 billion in savings (a number many expect to go higher) would be achieved.

August had long been rumored to be the month of mass layoffs, with the first wave now expected as early as next week as the honeymoon period for the new regime is coming to an end.

This coming Monday also marks the start of WBD’s three-days-a-week return-to-office mandate, which became one of the first major tests for the new leadership; the return plan was met with strong resistance by WarnerMedia employees when it was announced soon after the merger was completed.