While Paramount CEO David Ellison grapples to take control of Warner Bros Discovery, he should be mindful to remember the architects in addition to the architecture.
In other words, in the pursuit of merging content, be careful not to throw out those who shepherded it.
No, that wasn’t the exact pitch nor message from Warner Bros Motion Picture Chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy today in their sit-down with TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey today at the the festival’s new market, nor was the pending merger even broached (again, a similar situation to when De Luca sat down for a chat at last summer’s Produced By Conference).
What the duo did talk about this afternoon was how they got the 100-year plus Warner Bros to the current state of global box office height ($4.4 billion last year, best since 2019) and restored award-winning glory (11 Oscar wins this year from Sinners, Weapons, One Battle After Another and a Best Picture Oscar in the later, Warner’s first since 2012’s Argo).
As De Luca emphasized a studio doesn’t get there without having “credibility with filmmakers”. That’s always been their mantra as producers.
“It’s the only currency that matters,” added De Luca.
Essentially, think of a studio as a bank. “You can put a face on that and give the filmmaker an experience that they can trust,” he added, “you get repeat business. People want to come back because they feel they were treated fairly.”
Read, the specific ownership deal they made with Ryan Coogler on Sinners, as well as giving Paul Thomas Anderson all the tools he needed to make his most commercial movie in One Battle After Another (shot in VistaVision for a reported $140M).
“For any filmmaker, we want a door open for them,” said De Luca emphasizing the studio’s label strategy with Richard Brener leading New Line, James Gunn and Peter Safran at DC, Bill Damaschke at Warner Bros Pictures Animation and now Christian Parkes leading the Burbank, CA lot’s genre indie label Clockwork with projects from auteurs Sean Baker, Mary Bronstein, and Park Chan-wook. Clockwork made their TIFF debut with a screening and a party yesterday for their re-release of Warner’s banned 1971 Ken Russell directed movie, The Devils.
Essentially, per De Luca the m.o. for the Warner Bros of now is “creating an atmosphere for filmmakers to keep coming back.”
De Luca said that when Abdy and him sat down with WBD CEO David Zaslav about the job, they had the belief (which has paid off) that the theatrical audience was making their way back to cinemas post pandemic. This was a different belief from even the previous ruling AT&T administration of Warner Bros which believed that streaming was the future, and there was an urgency to catch up with Netflix’s pace.
“We talked about the legacy of Warner Bros. with socially relevant movies, and not trading commercial success for social relevance,” said De Luca, “Social relevance can be a commercial hook that gives your campaign a reason to be.”
Bailey turned to annual domestic box office, and although the motion picture industry is bound to see the best post Covid year ever with $10 billion, inflation dilutes the real value of that figure. De Luca said that while the business might be a smaller pie, “our mission is to be a bigger piece of that smaller pie. The bar is high on quality control and curation. That’s how you win in today’s marketplace. That’s never been more important than now when people have more choices.”
Abdy reminded Bailey that “the industry is still making less movies then they did,” roughly 20-30% below what the majors pumped out pre-Covid.
While Bailey didn’t bring up Warner Bros’ current downturn at the box office (summer domestic alone was off from -76% in 2025), Abdy did say she was never a fan of comparing years. “I always found it interesting comparing year-over-year because we’re not making widgets. So, it’s not like this glass we’re making is the same that we’re releasing in ’28 and ’28. Every movie is different, and it’s hard to make a comparison.”
The duo’s business plan has always been about the success of the entire annual slate, not just hanging the lot on the failure of one or two movies. Still on deck for Warner Bros in 2026 is this weekend’s Practical Magic 2 which will lead the North American box office with around $30M-$35M, the Tom Cruise political comedy Digger, animated pic The Cat in the Hat, DC’s Clayface and the mother of them all, Legendary’s Dune: Part 3 which has already sold out its 70MM Imax showtimes. Already, it’s been predicted with Disney/Marvel’s Avengers: Doomsday (with $50M in the bank from presales) to be another Barbenheimer at the box office, but for fanboys.
Last year, De Luca and Abdy re-upped their deals as Warner Bros Motion Picture Chairs following the studio clearing $4 billion at the global box office.
Asked by Bailey about the resurgence of Gen Z, and how to harness that, De Luca explained that the duo have plenty of algorithmic and predictive research thrown at them. “It can only look backwards,” he said.
“Gen Z wants to go to the movies, have experiences with friends and have authentic experiences created for them; they will show up,” explained Abdy.
Their means of knowing what Gen Z-ers want: just go with the projects that you like.
“Embrace the unknown,” says De Luca when it comes to green lighting a movie. He found Zac Cregger’s Weapons to be a clever script, and when he savored it, the studio co-boss passed it around to his colleagues in the C-suite.
“If anyone is saying you can predict what Gen Z wants, they’re lying, you have to go with your guts on what is a good movie,” De Luca said, “Half the time, the audience doesn’t know what they want until they see it.”
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