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Is Warner Bros. Ready for Its Close-Up?

'Superman' (or any single movie) won’t move a media company’s stock price like its overall television business does. But now that David Zaslav is spinning off his linear assets, there’s about to be a lot more pressure on the film studio to perform.

David Zaslav, James Gunn
Every Warner Bros. TV show, game title, and especially tentpole movie release just became more important. If Superman were coming out next summer, after the split closes, its performance would impact Zaslav’s bottom line a lot more than it will today. Photo: Eric Charbonneau/Getty Images
Matthew Belloni
June 12, 2025

James Gunn locked his final cut of the long-awaited Superman last week, and Warner Bros. has started showing the $225 million reboot to talent and their reps during the past few days. It’s a huge movie for Warners and DC Studios, of course, with a commensurately sized marketing blitz and global press tour ahead of the July 11 release. (Look for Gunn and DC co-head Peter Safran in Beijing, trying to convince the Chinese to embrace the great defender of the American way.) The future of Warners’ DC universe—and the many sequels and spinoffs and Krypto the Superdog Labubus that C.E.O. David Zaslav would like to sell—depends on it.