Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav Embraces Theatrical in Emotional CinemaCon Debut: ‘This Is Our Time’
thewrap.comMax 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.
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