Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav is meeting with potential candidates to replace film bosses Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, according to a report by Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter.
The talks, Bloomberg says, are “at an early and informal stage” with a final decision about De Luca and Abdy’s fate at the company having not yet been made.
Still, Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson Robert Gibbs told Bloomberg that “the rumor of an imminent leadership change at the studio is not accurate.”
The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Warner Bros. for comment.
The report comes on the eve of CinemaCon, the annual convention of theater owners in Las Vegas, where De Luca and Abdy are expected to present Warner Bros. upcoming slate on Tuesday night.
De Luca and Abdy have faced pressure, and strings of negative headlines, in the wake of several high-profile bombs, such as Joker: Folie à Deux and Mickey 17, though deals for some of those misses were largely in place before they took the reins of the studio in June 2022.
Minecraft, considered their first true greenlight from start to finish, arrives Friday and is tracking to do decent business at the box office. That will be followed by Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which they landed after a bidding war in part by making an unusual deal with the filmmaker wherein the rights to the IP revert to him after several decades.
The studio is also coming off the major miss Alto Knights, which ironically Zaslav greenlit himself despite observers believing it had limited prospects.
De Luca and Abdy’s possible exit comes amid a shifting landscape in top film executive ranks.
On Thursday, Amazon MGM Studios stunned Hollywood with the ouster of Jennifer Salke.
During Abdy and De Luca’s time as co-chairs and CEOs of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, the pair have signed high-profile deals with stars like Tom Cruise and Margot Robbie.
This fall Warner Bros. is expected to release Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, and it is in production on Alejandro González Iñárritu’s The Revenant English-language feature follow-up, which is set for release in the fall of 2026. The currently untitled film stars Cruise and is the first project to come out of his deal.
In January Warner Bros. saw the exit of marketing chief Josh Goldstine and international distribution president Andrew Cripps.
Prior to joining Warner Bros., De Luca and Abdy ran the film division of MGM, leaving the company after Amazon acquired the studio in 2022.
Aaron Couch contributed to this report.
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