There’s a lot of talk these days, both on Wall Street and in Hollywood, that David Zaslav’s days at Warner Bros. Discovery may be numbered, just in time for the second anniversary of his blockbuster deal merging Discovery Communications with WarnerMedia. The passing of the two-year milestone is crucial to Zaz’s ambitions, of course, because it liberates him and his company to do other big deals—Paramount? NBCU?—without having to worry about triggering the Reverse Morris Trust tax consequences. 

The anniversary, which arrives next month, has been much anticipated since the genesis of WBD. But no one ever conceived back then that Zaz would be in this sort of predicament. After a year spent charming everyone in town before the deal closed, Zaz employed a series of ruthless financial tactics in an industry where executives tend to grinfuck one another, provide soft landings, and worry about optics. Making matters worse for himself and his investors, as he killed some projects and disappeared others, he has failed to keep his promises to Wall Street.