Who is David Zaslav? All about Warner Bros. Discovery CEO amid DC cancellation and new 10-year plan

David Zaslav is the new President and Chief Executive Officer of Warner Bros. Discovery. As the company recently experienced some shifts in its business structure, it has been speculated to be distancing itself from the entirety of Snyderverse.

Moreover, the upcoming Batgirl movie has been shelved, and the Warner Bros. studio is now reportedly attempting to reproduce the structure of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU). As per Collider, CEO David Zaslav has admitted that the same "is something we think could be better.”

According to Collider, Zaslav has noted, in a new statement, that their business has undergone a "reset." In addition, the CEO also mentioned a "10-year plan focusing just on DC." Admitting more on the same, Zaslav commented about the plan being "very similar to the structure that Alan Horne and Bob Iger put together very effectively with Kevin Feige at Disney."

Noting further, Zaslav commented that the new strategy would mostly focus on "quality." He further added:

"DC is something we can make better, and we’re focused on it now. We have some great DC films coming up. ‘Black Adam,’ ‘Shazam!,’ and ‘Flash.’ We’re working on all of those. We’ve seen them, and we think they’re terrific, and that we can make them even better. That’s what Mike [De Luca] and Pam [Abdy, Warner Bros.’ new motion picture heads] are doing."

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Everything we know about David Zaslav, Warner Bros. CEO

While there has been much talk about his work, social media has been interested in knowing who David Zaslav is. He was born into a Polish and Ukrainian Jewish family on January 15, 1960. While he was still in school, he moved to Rockland County where he studied his high school years at Ramapo High School. He was also crowned as the captain of the varsity's tennis team.

Zaslav combined AT&T and Discovery to serve as the Chief Executive Officer of Warner Bros. Discovery merger from April 2022. He previously worked as the Chief Executive Officer and President of Discovery Inc. from November 16, 2006. His term ended on April 8, 2022, as he began heading the Warner Media merger. In the extension of his contract, Zaslav received great stock options valued at no less than $190 million.

David Zaslav graduated with an honors degree from Boston University School of Law. He also received a bachelor of science degree from Binghamton University. Prior to working with Discovery, Zaslav worked at NBCUniversal where he launched CNBC and MSNBC. Later, he focused on working for Bravo, CNBC World, ShopNBC, Telemundo, SCI FI, Telemundo Puerto Rico, Sleuth, mun2, Trio, USA Network, Universal HD, Olympics, and the NBC Weather Plus, which were an integral part of the Cable, Domestic TV, and Domestic TV and New Media Distribution. He has also worked as an attorney with the New York firm of LeBoeuf, Lamb, Leiby and MacRae.

More about David Zaslav as a Warner Bros. head

While many people are doubting Zaslav's moves, he has been leading Discovery since 2007 and has executed a number of initiatives that focused on growth and efficiency. The company has expanded to 3 billion worldwide viewers while being globally renowned. It has also placed itself in top positions in key international markets.

David Zaslav also serves as a huge part of Sirius XM Radio, Inc., the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, The Cable Center, Grupo Televisa, Partnership for New York City, and USC Shoah Foundation.

In the new strategy discussions, David Zaslav has also noted that while the focus would be on theatrical releases, “a number of movies will be released with shorter windows…and with different marketing campaigns. But we’ll always be agile, and the focus will be on theatrical.” He further added:

"We think we could build a long-term, much more sustainable growth business out of DC, and as part of that, we’re going to focus on quality. We’re not going to release any film before it’s ready… The focus is going to be, how do we make each of these films, in general, as good as possible?"

However, another piece of information that was revealed during the crucial investors' call is the planning to make Discovery+ and HBO Max a unified streaming platform. Earlier this year, Zaslav had reportedly hinted at HBO Max and Discovery Plus' merger. As per The Verge, he noted:

“Our goal is to compete with the leading streaming services, not to win the spending war."

In the same call earlier, CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels had also mentioned that the new company would mainly be interested to look into “content efficiencies.”

Reiterating the quality of the new investors' call, David Zaslav noted that the decision has been made to offer better customer experience. HBO Max has been reportedly backing off from original productions while focusing more on the cinematic projects.

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David Zaslav also mentioned that expensive movies for streaming did not make much economic sense. However, The Wrap notes that while the CEO discussed future plans related to the expansion of DC, the company's stock dropped 14%.