Channing Dungey, Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Television Studios has announced during the content london event that the company has reached an unprecedented agreement with Amazon. He claims that the studio is looking into taking its characters outside of HBO Max: “HBO Max is the first stop, but we are in the process of closing a deal with Amazon with DC animated content.”
Expenses are to blame. Dungey has not specified, according to VarietyWhat practical applications will the deal have, but the agreement has been in preparation for a couple of years. This is a clear reaction to the crisis situation in the streaming that has not yet exploded, but that the audience data is forecasting in the medium term (and Warner is one of the platforms that more moves is making to cushion the blow): according to the executive, the platforms were “stuck in a spending bubble” that the pandemic has put an end to.
Dungey has stated that “there’s been a feeling for a while that if you weren’t spending $10 million an hour, you weren’t doing the job right.” But he adds that “you don’t need that to make a great program and that we did things differently in the pandemic showed that.” That is, there are possibilities beyond the splurge, and Warner is determined to explore it.
Opening new avenues. Without a doubt, and beyond the saving element that there is in this unexpected change of plans by Warner, the most interesting thing that it provokes is a change in the conversation. Dungey has alluded to the intention of the Warner’s new CEO David Zaslav to be open to collaboration with firms outside the company itself.
It is a leap that differentiates Zaslav from the old guard, for which “everything had to stay inside the house, nothing was wanted to go outside.” And it is, without a doubt, a change in the general panorama, where we have assimilated in a very short time that Disney and Marvel productions are going to end exclusively on Disney+, those of Netflix can be seen exclusively on the platform and what Warner produces It always ends on HBO Max.
A possible change of perspective. The questions that this new Warner strategy throws into the air are, on the one hand, if Warner will continue this timid flirtation with its rival until now with a more aggressive policy. Letting DC movies be seen on other platforms, for example, or co-producing its most ambitious products with other companies, are avenues that are open now that it is clear that platforms need methods to balance expenses with methods. as traditional and profitable as advertising.
On the other hand, the question of whether other companies might be willing to carry out similar operations also opens. It would be a change in the rules of the game that would return us to what Hollywood was like until very recently: a production company could invest money in a film, but also reach agreements with rivals for successive windows, such as exploitation in the domestic market. or television. Since physical formats have ceased to be a profitable option and production companies have their own and only platform to which they exclusively allocate their content, the situation seemed to have turned around, but… has that led to the market gets so tight that there is no oxygen for profit?
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