Warner Bros. Discovery may be in the process of being acquired by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance, but its management is not taking its eye off the ball.
Gerhard Zeiler, president, international and Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Andrew Georgiou, president & managing director, U.K. & Ireland and sports EMEA at the company, took to the London stage on Thursday at the Enders TMT Leaders Live conference.
“Scale is important in today’s media world,” Zeiler said. “If someone tells you otherwise, he is not telling you the truth.”
Being well-targeted is the alternative, but being medium-sized is “not good enough” in the modern day, he highlighted. And he added: “To be scaled only in one country, even in the U.S.,” is also not enough anymore.
Zeiler also recalled on Thursday what WBD CEO David Zaslav said after the merger that created the conglomerate as it looks today, before the planned sale to Paramount Skydance. “We need to focus on great storytelling,” Zeiler quoted Zaslav. And he recalled him saying: “I want to produce new Harry Potter content.” The executive recalled that he and other managers thought that he would see how difficult that is, but now that company has done so and will premiere the much-anticipated Potter series this December.
