How David Zaslav blew up Hollywood
As the buzz around Barbie grew, so did Zaslav’s enthusiasm. If there’s one thing he can do, it’s market a product. At Discovery, he turned “Shark Week” into a cultural phenomenon with promotional stunts such as staging a race between Olympic gold medalist Michael Phelps and a shark. (Phelps was swimming alone in a time trial, and the shark he was supposed to race against was just a computer-generated image, but it got great ratings nonetheless.) Now Zaslav has a whole media group at his disposal. He asked his marketing team to engage every department at WBD to help turn the summer of 2023 into a “Barbie Summer,” and they did. There was the four-part Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge series on the home improvement channel HGTV, where teams compete to transform an actual house into a Barbie Dreamhouse, and a Barbie-themed episode of “Summer Baking Championship” on the Food Network, where all the desserts had to be pink. Warner Brothers even partnered with Airbnb to renovate a real-life, rentable Barbie Dreamhouse in Malibu. Zaslav loved sending gift boxes to hundreds of his friends and acquaintances; Before the premiere, he assembled a Barbie-themed dollhouse, complete with dolls, toy Malibu Barbie beach cruisers, and pink T-shirts and hats.
The film was, of course, a huge hit — a huge hit, grossing $162 million in its first weekend, while reminding America why it loves going to the movies. It was a moment of triumph for Hollywood, and confirmation of its enduring cultural importance. Even now, amid fragmentation, the media has not lost its democratic power to attract and move mass audiences around the world. Just as important, the film’s success was a rebuke to the streaming era’s belief that you can use data to engineer or predict a hit. Even in the age of algorithms, no one seems to know anything. “It’s the good news you get in the movie business but you don’t deserve it,” Diller says of “Barbie.”
It was a triumphant moment for Mattel, too. The company’s CEO, Yinon Kriz, was a former media and entertainment executive, and the “Barbie” movie was part of his much larger strategy to turn Mattel into an intellectual property company, with a slew of films based on its toys. . (Coming soon: a Hot Wheels movie, a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie, and a horror comedy based on the Magic 8 Ball.) He praised the film as a “defining moment” in his plan and celebrated it as a “defining moment” in his plan. genius. Mattel shares have been on the rise for months as excitement grows around the film and Kreiz’s larger Hollywood-focused strategy.
By contrast, WBD shares remained flat. One movie was not enough to change Wall Street’s view of the company, which was burdened by debt and unprepared for growth. Zaslav’s shares didn’t rise either, at least among those who saw him as a symbol of corporate greed. On the Monday following the “Barbie” weekend, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined a crowd of protesters at a WGA and SAG-AFTRA rally outside WBD’s global headquarters in Manhattan. “This is a fight against the endless pursuit of more wealth,” she said. “How many private jets does David Zaslav need?”
There was still one A source of solace for Zaslav: cash flow. When WBD reported earnings to Wall Street in early August, the big news was that it generated $1.7 billion in cash flow last quarter, enabling the company to pay down more of its debt. Most of this was due to Zaslav’s aggressive cost-cutting regime, but the writers’ strike was also a boon, enabling WBD to save “in the low $100 million range” during the quarter. Zaslav told analysts: Of course there were challenges. The studio and DC “underutilized their potential” — Barbie was not part of that quarter — and, moreover, it was a difficult time for the company. Wiedenfels, Zaslav’s longtime CFO, said he was “very proud” of the $1.7 billion, but there was a lot more where it came from; His “turnaround team” was looking for more savings.
