Zaslav leaves Warner Bros. — what's left of animation

David Zaslav is stepping down as head of Warner Bros. Discovery: the company is passing into the control of Paramount Skydance, with the deal expected to close on Tuesday. Before leaving, Zaslav sent employees a farewell video message — the recording was obtained by Variety.

In the message he thanks his colleagues and, separately, the artists and craftspeople who "imagined what did not exist and found a way to bring it to life." For Warner's animation division those words sound ambiguous: it was under Zaslav that the studio shelved finished and nearly finished films, shut down the Cartoon Network website and the Boomerang streaming service, and pulled hundreds of classic cartoons from online availability. The results of these four and a half years will now be the new owner's to deal with.

For four and a half years Warner's animation lived in austerity mode

Zaslav's arrival coincided with harsh cost-cutting, and animation turned out to be one of the most visible victims of that policy. What happened during this time:

• layoffs and the merger of Cartoon Network Studios with Warner Bros. Animation — two independent production centers were folded into a single structure;
• dozens of animated titles were removed from HBO Max, and some projects were cancelled;
• the nearly completed Scoob! Holiday Haunt was shelved in 2022;
• Cartoon Network moved out of its longtime Burbank headquarters, and the channel's website and the Boomerang streaming service were closed;
• dozens of titles disappeared from online availability, including hundreds of classic Looney Tunes shorts.

The loudest episode was the story of Coyote vs. Acme: the fully finished film was written off for a tax deduction the year after the Scoob! shelving, despite strong test screenings. Warner later did allow the picture to be sold, and this year it was released in theaters by Ketchup Entertainment.

Features were rebuilt from scratch, but it's the new owner who will check the result

Against the backdrop of these losses, the one area that produced encouraging news under Zaslav is feature animation. The company relaunched that production under the Warner Bros. Pictures Animation brand and brought in Bill Damaschke, the former head of DreamWorks Animation, to run it. A slate was assembled for him: The Cat in the Hat, Bad Fairies, The Lunar Chronicles, Oh, the Places You'll Go! and Vivienne Medrano's original feature Prehistoria.

Whether this relaunch succeeds will be decided after Zaslav's departure: the fate of the slate is for Paramount Skydance's management to determine. The new owner has not yet made any public statements about plans for these projects.

Why it became easier to write off finished films than to release them

Zaslav's story at Warner looks like a particular case of how the economics of large media holdings have changed. After the wave of mergers, companies were left with large debts and expensive streaming platforms that had to be driven into profit. In that logic an animation library turns into a line of expenses: storage and exhibition rights have to be paid for, while there is no visible direct return from rarely viewed shorts. That is probably what the catalog purges, the closure of niche services and the refusal of marketing budgets for already shot films are connected to.

Other studios have made similar decisions in recent years, so the departure of a single executive is unlikely to reverse the trend. A change of ownership usually launches a new round of optimization — a review of the project portfolio, cuts to duplicate divisions, a recalculation of release plans. If market consolidation continues, animation teams should expect shorter production cycles and tougher project selection at the outset, while contractor studios should expect the client to change priorities more often in the middle of production.

Whether the bet on relaunching features paid off can only be checked by the releases of the coming years. Answering for the result will be a different team.

Community reaction

David Zaslav's farewell video to Warner Bros. Discovery employees ahead of the Paramount Skydance deal's closing was met with almost no regret. Under posts by industry outlets and animation accounts, the warm words about honor, legacy and the future read as mockery after layoffs, cancelled projects and the sell-off of the studio. The main argument is one and the same: he is leaving with an enormous exit package, while thousands of people who made that legacy risk being left without work. The second motif is not celebration but weary sarcasm and caution. Film journalists see him off with a sneering wish for a pleasant retirement; the animation community says outright that the studio was wrecked. Some commenters, meanwhile, are in no rush to rejoice: the company is passing to David Ellison, and for animation that may turn out to be not a breather but the next wave of cuts.

"This is genuinely vile: he's leaving with almost half a billion dollars and will go on living comfortably, while thousands of his employees will most likely be out of work within months."

— @spongieupdates (X)

"He wrecked the company and got paid for it on the way out."

— @blakachu_ (X)

"Hey, thanks for everything. Enjoy your retirement — you've earned it."

— @BrndnStrssng (X)

What do you think the fate of Warner's animation comes down to: the bet on streaming, Discovery's debt load, preparation for the sale? Or is the reason something else?