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So, Who Gets the Credit for Warner Bros.?

David Zaslav’s once-flailing movie studio has notched its sixth straight $40 million-plus opening weekend, including two of the three top earners of the year. In simple terms, Warners’ hot streak comes from placing smart bets and making the most of them, but there’s always an asterisk in the new tangled Hollywood calculus.

Warner Bros Weapons
WB’s streak now continues with Weapons, a shockingly well-received horror title that also skewed 72 percent under-35 in its opening weekend. Photo: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Scott Mendelson
August 12, 2025

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What a difference six months makes in Hollywood. In early March, my colleague Kim Masters headlined this space with Can Mike & Pam Survive at Warners?, which chronicled the incessant industry debate over whether Warner Bros. Discovery C.E.O. David Zaslav would replace Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy as co-heads of Warner Bros. Pictures. Her story came in the long wake of the disastrous Joker: Folie à Deux, which De Luca and Abdy had said was their “first greenlight” at Warners, as well as the failure of Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17, a $120 million R-rated sci-fi comedy greenlit by the prior regime.