WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar, who is stepping down this week before the company’s merger with Discovery closes, takes pride in being “first over the wall” with a day-and-date streaming movie strategy.
The company stunned the industry at the end of 2020 by announcing the entire 2021 Warner Bros slate would stream on HBO Max at the same time it hit theaters. Rival companies like Disney and NBCUniversal took a more case-by-case approach despite widespread movie theater closures and other disruptions due to Covid.
“History is already looking at it quite favorably,” Kilar said in an interview with Deadline on Tuesday, when his exit was made official. “It worked. We were the first over the wall.” he said.
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Discovery and WarnerMedia are expected to close their $43 billion merger as soon as Friday, completing a spinoff of the entertainment company less than three years after it was acquired by AT&T.
Proof of the effectiveness of the streaming initiative, which bore the internal nickname “Project Popcorn,” can be seen in WarnerMedia’s record 2021 revenue of $35.6 billion, Kilar contends. HBO Max, strengthened by the influx of theatrical releases, ended the year with 73.8 million global subscribers when combined with HBO, exceeding internal projections.
The talent community let out a collective howl after the Popcorn move, with top agents, filmmakers and others expressing their bitter frustration. Christopher Nolan, who had revitalized the Batman franchise for Warner Bros in addition to making hits like Inception for the studio, decamped for Universal after lambasting the HBO Max shift. Over time, though, financial arrangements were reached with a number of parties and the furor quieted. Estimates for those payouts were in the range of $200 million. One party was not mollified by any attempts to smooth things over: Village Roadshow, which filed a lawsuit earlier this year over the…