How Warner Bros Discovery’s David Zaslav defied Hollywood — again

When David Zaslav became Warner Bros Discovery’s boss in 2022, Hollywood was sceptical of the insignia-vest-wearing east-coaster whose Discovery network was known for reality fare such as 90-Day Fiancé and Dr Pimple Popper. 

Through shrewd dealmaking and under the mentorship of John Malone, Zaslav had catapulted himself into one of the most powerful jobs in entertainment: managing the Warner Bros studio and HBO. 

Three years later, Zaslav is closing in on another dealmaking feat.

After overseeing a 70 per cent decline in WBD’s share price, a bidding war between Netflix and Paramount for Warner’s assets has helped reverse the slide. The stock traded at $30 a share on Friday, up from about $8 in April. 

If Paramount prevails, Zaslav could walk away with $700mn to $800mn from his equity and option package, according to a person familiar with his contract. His payout could reach close to $1bn if the bidding war keeps pushing up the price — a stunning outcome for an executive who is not a founder.

The potential windfall has already sparked some anger, given the heavy cost-cutting he and his chief financial officer, Gunnar Wiedenfels, have imposed on WBD.

Stephen Galloway, dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts, said Zaslav’s tenure would be marked by the “ungodly amounts of money he took from a company in decline”.

“He will go down in Hollywood history as a major blot on the legacy of an extraordinary studio,” Galloway said. “This sale will give him some kind of redemption.”

Zaslav has fuelled the resentment during his tenure through unforced public relations mis-steps, such as the celebrity-packed yacht party he threw during the Hollywood strikes in 2023. 

Now, as a sale to either Netflix or Paramount threatens thousands of job losses at Warner — just as Zaslav’s big payday comes due — the optics are familiar.

On Sunday, Zaslav is planning to fly on his private jet to Boston to watch a New England Patriots NFL game with the team’s owner, billionaire Robert Kraft, according to people familiar with the matter.

Fellow media executives and friends say they have advised him to keep a lower profile, but he has not listened. Showbiz insiders remain sceptical of a man still straining for acceptance in a town that never warmed to him.  

“He’s still not considered an insider to Hollywood. American media executives have this huge desire to be considered insiders, to have access to DC and access to Hollywood. And that motivates Zaslav,” said a former senior Disney executive and media veteran. 

Zaslav has for years organised regular Zoom calls with a rotating group of other powerful media moguls, such as Disney’s Bob Iger, Universal Music boss Lucian Grainge, former Vanity Fair and Air Mail editor Graydon Carter and Sony’s Howard Stringer. 

“He always finds a way to make huge amounts of money for himself and shareholders. But he won’t ever be an Iger,” the executive added. “Because he just doesn’t understand the business of content and talent. He doesn’t get it.” 

Yet his manner is unchanged. Former Goldman Sachs chief Lloyd Blankfein once described him as having “that ‘golly gee’ aspect”. “He’s so enthusiastic that sometimes I get tired just talking to him. I have to rest up,” Blankfein told the Financial Times in 2021. 

After the Warner Bros-Discovery deal closed in 2022, the New York-born Zaslav sought to recast himself from a cable TV executive into a Hollywood power broker. He moved into Jack Warner’s old office on the Warner Bros lot and began to weigh in on creative decisions at the studio — moves that chafed many in the industry. 

Following poor box office returns in 2024, Zaslav reportedly considered firing the two executives who run the Warner Bros movies studios, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy. But their 2025 slate was filled with successes, including A Minecraft Movie, Sinners and One Battle After Another. The studio became the first to exceed $4bn at the global box office, and Zaslav renewed De Luca and Abdy’s contracts.

In the wake of the box office successes, Zaslav declared that Warner Bros was back after years of difficult retrenchment. However, the shares remained underwater until September, when Paramount’s David Ellison began to pursue a deal with WBD.

Even his critics admit that Zaslav, a lawyer by training, has played a weak hand well with the WBD auction. One Hollywood executive said that Zaslav had shown what he does best during the process: “He works the media and sells, sells, sells.”

Media mogul David Geffen, a neighbour of Zaslav’s in Long Island who invested in WBD at an average price of about $7 per share, gives Zaslav credit for turning the company round.

“At the end of the day you have to look at where is the company? Are they making pictures that people want to see? Are they making television series that people want to see? Are they making money? Are they paying down their debt?” he said. “I think the answer to all of those is he’s done very well.” 

A banker who has worked closely with Zaslav said: “These assets were fundamentally broken and David and his team have done a phenomenal job of getting the streaming business on a great footing.”

“Early on the Netflix guys told us very directly that they would not have been interested in these assets two years ago,” the banker said. “A lot of CEOs are up in their offices and only interacting with direct reports. That’s not who David is. He rolls up his sleeves.”

Others say he has been lucky: that Ellison came knocking unprompted and the assets — including Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Batman, Superman and a library of classic films — would be coveted whoever was running them. 

Zaslav has renegotiated his pay as the process picked up speed. This summer, shareholders rejected Zaslav’s $52mn pay package for 2024 in a nonbinding vote. He was then granted new stock options with a lower strike price of just over $10, which would only be redeemable if he oversaw the spin-off of the company’s cable networks before the end of next year. Those would kick in under a Netflix deal, which excludes the cable networks.

The proposed Paramount deal does include the cable business, however. In that case, Zaslav has provisions allowing his options to be triggered in the event of a change of control of the company.

The former Disney executive said Zaslav had not been a strategic leader of Warner so much as an executor. “He’s not an empire builder. He’s more of a mercenary.”

Additional reporting by James Fontanella-Khan in New York