Last week AT&T bought Time Warner for $85.4 billion. Companies like Warner Bros., HBO, and CNN are now under an AT&T division called WarnerMedia, and John Stankey, a 30-year AT&T veteran, is the new CEO. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Stankey was asked about the future of DC movies and if he’d get involved.
Stankey went on to praise the performance of DC movies over the past year and a half, as well as Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara. Stankey vowed to give Tsujihara his full support going forward to help take the DCEU to the next level. Check out his full reply below.
At Warner Bros. there have been some creative challenges on the DC Comics films. I know you said you’re not going to get into creative, but this is a strategic, gigantic play for that company and compared to what Marvel is doing for Disney, it seems like this would be something that you’d get involved in.
First of all, I think the performance [of DC movies] over the past year and a half is trending the right direction in terms of the quality of the product and how the franchise is being managed. So hats off to Kevin [Tsujihara] and the team around getting the momentum headed the right direction. Obviously, there were some public things that have occurred over the last couple of weeks [Diane Nelson and Geoff Johns, who ran DC Entertainment, both stepped down] that would indicate that some additional change is underway. My involvement in that is to make sure I support Kevin in getting the absolute best talent possible and we’ll take that franchise to the next level. That’s his set of decisions to make and his direction to go in.
It’s my job to facilitate, to make sure he has the full support of the corporation and getting that done. And I believe, as you sit here today and we start to think about what the new value proposition is for a combined Warner Media and AT&T, we obviously want to go to creatives and talk about what we can do with our platforms now that are different than what a stand-alone Time Warner could do prior to the transaction. That’s a unique opportunity, and I want to make sure I can help Kevin sell that and get the right amount of talent in here to elevate the franchise to a new level.
Many fans were expecting (some even hoping) that Tsujihara would be one of the first executives to leave after the big AT&T and Time Warner merger. But if we take Stankey at his word here, Tsujihara may be sticking around for a while.
SOURCE: The Hollywood Reporter
