HOLLYWOOD HIGH
Warner Bros.’ film division is having a ‘quietly amazing’ year,
BURBANK, CALIF.— Behind the beige walls that enclose the Warner Bros. lot here, Kevin Tsujihara has been ruminating on perception versus reality — a classic Hollywood subject onscreen, but one that the studio is now experiencing in real life.
Tsujihara, the Warner Bros. chief executive, is on track to deliver record operating profit this year, with film leading the way. Last week, Time Warner said his division — home to Batman, Clint Eastwood, Bugs Bunny, The Middle and TMZ.com — had an income of $433 million (U.S.), a 12-per-cent increase from a year earlier. Its corporate sibling HBO, by comparison, with $530 million in profit, grew 2 per cent.
Yet many people consider Warner Bros. a troubled operation, a notion that Tsujihara thinks is rooted in an underappreciation of the studio’s wide-ranging businesses and the lingering effect of film pipeline problems that it has moved past.
“Quietly, we’ve been having an amazing year,” he said. “The narrative, overall, has not reflected that.”
Warner Bros. sits in the long shadow of HBO, a darling of the news media and Wall Street. When AT&T agreed to buy Time Warner for $85 billion last month, Warner Bros. was largely a footnote in the resulting analysis — even though the studio, among other things, has promising streaming services in the works, involving Harry Potter and Batman, that could be supercharged by the telecommunications company.
So how does Tsujihara correct the narrative?
The surest way is to deliver a smash hit, and Warner’s film division may be holding one in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Arriving in theatres on Nov. 18, the $180-million movie (not including an estimated $150 million in global marketing costs) expands J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter universe. Rowling, who wrote the Fantastic Beasts screenplay, last month announced four sequels, news that elated fans.
Reviews for Fantastic Beasts have not yet been published, but people (including this reporter) have been wowed in advance screenings. Set in New York in the 1920s and focused on the eccentric “magizoologist” Newt Scamander, the film could sell $70 million or more in tickets in its first three days in domestic theatres alone, according to analysts.
More hits could follow. Over the next year, Warner Bros. will release Wonder Woman, Kong: Skull Island, Justice League and two animated Lego movies.
When it comes to recasting Warner as the well-oiled giant he believes it is, Tsujihara also knows that the studio needs to do a better job of telling its own story. This year, for instance, some reporters and bloggers took gleeful delight in beating up Warner over the poor critical response to Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad.