Jekyll & Zaz

david zaslav
Zaz may have alienated the creative community in many ways, but he also has the realpolitik understanding that he can win them back with his growing film budgets and personal commitments. Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
William D. Cohan
August 14, 2024

A toxic combination of short sellers and the nattering nabobs of negativism have really got their hooks into the Warner Bros. Discovery stock these days. It’s now trading below $7 a share, around the all-time low, and down a whopping 15 percent in the last week. Overall, the stock is down 73 percent since David Zaslav’s Hollywood experiment began, in April 2022, and the company’s enterprise value is around $55 billion, 45 percent less than the $100 billion Zaz paid for WarnerMedia alone. As my partner Matt Belloni reported on Monday, there is also a growing frustration inside WBD, where Zaz has been likened by some to Michael Scott, Steve Carell’s comic boob of a manager from The Office