Where Does David Zaslav Rank Among Hollywoods Most Controversial Moguls?

Now that the debt-driven CEO David Zaslav has found his buyer for Warner Bros. in Netflix — and drawn a $108.4 billion hostile takeover bid from Paramount, too — history can judge him. Sure, he may stick around, hosting whoever still might wish to see him at Woodland, the storied Beverly Hills spread he purchased from the estate of the late Paramount chief Bob Evans. But his purpose in town is likely nearing completion, having cost cut his way to this grand sale, unfortunately for Hollywood shrinking its competitive field while fortunately for him further fattening his massive net worth. The Netflix deal is expected to deliver him another $660 million, making him a billionaire.

Zaslav, the longtime Discovery Communications CEO who first made his name developing CNBC and MSNBC, will likely go down as one of Hollywood’s most legendary dealmakers: studied at Wharton and revered in Sun Valley. Particularly after auctioning his asset skyward in spectacular fashion. In the run-up to the sale, Warner Bros. Discovery had been trading beneath $10. Cut to Paramount’s all-cash tender offer at $30 per share — which is likely to rise in the coming weeks.

Since closing his Discovery-WarnerMedia deal in 2022, he’s prioritized reducing the billions of debt he took on to create the combined entity. This has meant enforced austerity, including rounds of significant layoffs and cash-flow-first decisions — library monetization, sacrificing films to write-offs — which have eroded morale both inside and outside his company. He’s also spent much time overseeing the complex integration of two strikingly different corporate cultures and fiddling with their high-profile brands (HBO most of all), efforts which will be undone if the partial-purchase Netflix deal goes through.

However, in some quarters of the film industry, the executive is viewed with disdain. (In May 2023 he managed to go viral twice, first for being heckled during the writers’ strike while giving a college commencement speech, then days later for twinning in linen blazers with his Cannes party co-host and apparent swag coach Graydon Carter, who consulted for him on a redesign of the Warner Bros. commissary.) Despite a professed love of film and a willingness to occasionally bankroll his idols (like the $45 million spent on that De Niro flop The Alto Knights), he was publicly shamed by the likes of Spielberg and Scorsese into backpedaling from plans to destroy one of Hollywood’s pillars, Turner Classic Movies.

Hollywood has certainly been home to more notorious moguls, from Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, whose monopolistic aggression provoked the federal government into industrywide antitrust action, to Giancarlo Parretti, whose fraudulent financing of MGM led to the studio’s collapse. The more recent Paramount owner Sumner Redstone’s leadership did much to hollow out mid-budget theatrical filmmaking, and Rupert Murdoch’s choice in 2017 to sell Fox to Disney helped normalize the consolidation of the majors.

As for Zaslav, his management record is more nuanced. His handpicked Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca released a series of commercial and critical successes, including this year’s cultural touchstones Sinners and One Battle After Another, under his reign.

Among the recent crop of content kings, Zaslav’s a secondary player in the most significant shift for theatrical: the death of windowing. His predecessor Jason Kilar’s infamous “Project Popcorn” initiative, which sent all 2021 Warner Bros. films to HBO Max day-and-date — without consulting talent or agencies — was a blow to theatre owners they’ve never recovered from. Bob Iger’s own window-compression tactics to build out Disney+ during the pandemic elevated streaming at the expense of film. But of course, it’s Netflix boss and presumptive next Warner Bros. owner Ted Sarandos who’s arguably done more to devalue the big-screen experience than any other figure in Hollywood.

Zaslav’s no pioneering uber-baddie, except in the brazen writing-off of completed or near-completed films for tax advantage. That’s a novel tactic in the annals of this business. (See: Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Haunt, Coyote vs. Acme.) Rather, he’s a garden-variety opportunist running a playbook — in part written by the likes of his mentor John Malone, who sits on the board of Warner Bros. Discovery. Zaslav didn’t create the streaming logic or hyper financialization of this modern era. He’s simply its avatar and accelerant, Late Hollywood’s most successful profiteer.