It could be Warner Bros. Discovery is in the process of acquiring David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance company, but its management isn’t getting off the ball.
Gerhard Zeller, International President of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Andrew Georgiou, the company’s president and managing director of UK, Ireland and EMEA Sports, took the London stage on Thursday at the Enders TMT Leaders Live conference.
“Scope is important in today’s media world,” Zeller said. “If someone tells you otherwise, they are not telling you the truth.”
He emphasized that the alternative is for the company to be well targeted, but being medium-sized is “not good enough” in the modern era. “Expanding in just one country, even in the United States,” is no longer enough either, he added.
Zeller also pointed out Thursday what WBD CEO David Zaslav said after the merger that created the group as it looks today, before the planned sale to Paramount Skydance. “We need to focus on great storytelling,” Zeller quoted Zaslav. He reminds him, saying: “I want to produce something new.” Harry Potter Content.” The CEO noted that he and other executives thought he would see how difficult it would be, but now the company has done so and will premiere the long-awaited Potter The series will be released this December.
“We have to get rid of the exclusivity mentality that many of us still have,” Zeller added. HBO Max’s multi-month exclusivity is certainly key to huge new releases. But other than that, licensing and short-form content are key, the executive explained, even if there is some form of cannibalization. “It is always better to compartmentalize yourself than to compartmentalize others,” he concluded.
“Yes, our big theatrical films for the first six months, nine months will be exclusive to HBO Max,” Dragon HouseS, L trance“We’re not going to keep it somewhere else,” Zeller stressed. “But with a lot of the other programming we do, it’s important that we also put it on other platforms, on non-traditional platforms, on YouTube — whether that’s in long form, whether it’s running in clip form, whether that’s in short form.”
Zeller also shared that the U.S. box office is finally looking to surpass what it was before the coronavirus, expressing the optimism he constantly hears in the U.S.
“We’ve been really pleased with the way HBO Max has come to the UK. Obviously, we’re tracking any number of different metrics, but when we even look at the ambitious goals that we had around engagement, around individuality, around viewership ratings, around brand awareness, we’ve done exceptionally well. … We haven’t surprised ourselves with how well it’s done, especially because we were late to market,” Giorgio shared on Thursday.
