Warner Bros. Discovery reportedly looks to unload half of its music catalog
Music from Purple Rain, Casablanca, and Batman may soon be up for sale
Aux News Warner Bros
Hours after Warner Bros. Discovery announced it had hired Space Jam: A New Legacy’s Al-G Rhythm to serve as an “A.I.” film management system and less than a day since it scared the bejesus out of film fans due to layoffs at TCM, WBD is making fans of American popular culture nervous. Per Variety, and first reported by Hits, WBD reportedly seeks to unload the rights to “slightly less than half” of its billion-dollar music catalog. The studio’s music assets include a wealth of historically significant classics, including the music to Purple Rain, Sweeney Todd, Batman, and the tune WBD uses as its studio fanfare, “As Time Goes By” from Casablanca. The catalog is currently locked into a multi-year deal with Universal Music Publishing.
Variety notes that some “cast a skeptical eye on the deal” because some of the music is old and “difficult to exploit” because the catalog mainly consists of film themes and cues, not so many full, licensable songs. Still, the news nevertheless feels apiece with Warner Bros. Discovery’s approach to cultural preservation.
Yesterday, the Three Musketeers, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, and Paul Thomas Anderson, swooped into an emergency meeting with WBD CEO David Zaslav over the recent layoffs at Turner Classic Movies. Though they left “heartened and encouraged” by Zazlav’s reported love of classic film and TCM, many remain dubious. After all, unless you’re a shareholder, there hasn’t been much positive news out of Warner Bros. Discovery. With layoffs, restructurings, cancelations, and the writers’ strike, many expect more shoes to drop.
One of those shoes already did. Earlier today, The Hollywood Reporter announced that WBD signed a deal to use an “artificial intelligence” system to help with the greenlight process. THR writes, “The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams.”
We’d shed tears over the current state of Warner Bros., but in the immortal words of Al-G Rhythm, “There’s no crying in the Serververse!”
18 Comments
Why did these guys buy Warners only to strip it of its value? Maybe a business major out there can enlighten me?
short term stock juicing, the WSJ crowd loves this shit
Hmmm. It’s like so weird how none of the news about the WBD cuts have been about things pertaining to Discovery’s side of things. I can’t fathom why…
“I’m sorry. We’re going to have to let you go. It’s ‘Warner Brother’ now.”
Look, I just want the rights to The Michigan Rag and Batdance.
I’ll give you $3.17 for the theme song to Freakazoid and that’s my only offer!
I still maintain that the filmmaker meeting was a waste of time if the expressions ‘walk into the Pacific’ and ‘rocks in your pockets’ weren’t spoken to Zaslav.
This whole episode is going to end with Zazlav flying away on a billion dollar golden parachute while Disney announces a series of movies featuring their newly acquired Looney Tunes characters, isn’t it?
I’d wager Apple or Amazon.Have the cash, need the content.
Sounds both like a poor idea and a very short sighted one at that, so it fits right in with everything else they’re doing.
Zaslav continues to preside over a roaring dumpster fire! Unfortunately he won’t get canned. 🙁
Earlier today, The Hollywood Reporter announced that WBD signed a deal to use an “artificial intelligence” system to help with the greenlight process. THR writes, “The integrated online platform can assess the value of a star in any territory and how much a film is expected to make in theaters and on other ancillary streams.”This actually sounds like it could be useful, as a way to quickly generate projections that could be used as data points while making a decision.Of course, what will actually happen is that execs will use those projections as the sole reason behind their decision, and then blame the algorithm if the film fails to live up to expectations.
How much to buy the rights to the Road Runner’s “Beep”? I only need one of them.
Nice pull!
Cheap bastards.
It costs 25,000 anvils.
Stellantis (Plymouth) already beat you to it!
I’ve said it before, Zaslav is doing exactly what the CEO of Sears did. A legacy company being acquired by a lesser cheaper company, who’s CEO stripped it for as much money as he could while selling of assets and flooding it with cheap crap. The whole goal is lining his pockets in the near term.