Mike De Luca first started hearing the rumor more than a month ago that he and his Warner Bros. film co-head, Pam Abdy, were on the chopping block.
The source of the rumor was not David Ellison, whom the duo had met months earlier and who seemed to indicate they would remain in a post-merger world. No, De Luca heard it came from Josh Greenstein, co-chairman of Paramount Pictures.
Greenstein, according to sources close to the meeting, told other leaders at a cross-town engagement that he wanted to get rid of Abdy and De Luca. Other sources, also with direct knowledge of the conversation, countered that the remark was directed at the general stability of Warner Bros. and was made in the context of Greenstein vying for a project and in favor of stability and senior executives at Paramount.
Regardless, De Luca, never one to sit idly by, decided to go head-on and called Greenstein.
“Are you seriously saying that?” He demanded to know, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Greenstein denied the accusations and blamed it on a bad game of telephone. With the deal still in limbo due to the antitrust lawsuit, he was not legally allowed to make personnel decisions.
But on Friday, that conversation seems prescient in hindsight as Abdy and De Luca leave the studio they’ve run since 2022.
They learned that Greenstein and his co-chief Dana Goldberg were going to take control of the two film divisions – and that they were unemployed – just before a Puck The report broke the news Thursday evening.
It was the end of four years of ups and downs, during which the duo was the subject of Hollywood rumors, with constant questions about possible oustings and contract renewals, in almost equal measure.
They have been accused of overspending on films with limited commercial prospects, like this weekend’s Tom Cruise bomb. Excavatorand were hailed as cinematic heroes thanks to major box office wins like Sinners And Weapons, and for bringing home the best picture for One battle after another.
In the months leading up to the merger, De Luca and Abdy thought they were safe after a meeting with Ellison, during which he suggested they would stay, according to a highly placed Warners source. They told people that they thought there could be a friendly rivalry between them and Greenstein and Goldberg, given that they all had their own relationships with talent and filmmakers. Maybe competition could even inspire each other to become better.
“Obviously a lot has changed since then,” says the Warners source.
All that’s left is for De Luca and Abdy to plan their next moves. They told associates they might go to Netflix, and De Luca reportedly approached Netflix mogul Ted Sarandos during a series of conversations they had when the streaming giant was tipped to buy Warner Bros. at the end of last year.
Could they help Netflix gain more of a foothold in the theatrical space? Could they bring their auteur philosophy to the streamer, which has middling films like Continue And Red notice as one of the most watched films of all time?
“All their relationships are theatrical relationships. You’re not going to convince these filmmakers to go and make their big movie on streaming,” warns a source who has deals with both Warners and Netflix. “If I were Ted, I’d say, ‘Come on, I’ll make you an offer honey and help us think about what theater could look like.’
Netflix showed its willingness to move into the theatrical business when it was set to acquire Warner Bros., and is granting its longest theatrical window ever for its acquisition at Cannes. The Black Bola as he searches for the elusive Best Picture Oscar.
“Netflix’s audience taste is more in the middle. It would be interesting to have them and their more filmmaker-driven approach at Netflix,” says one Warners business observer. “I just don’t know if the Netflix audience wants that. They want Red noticenot May December Or Rome Or lost girl.”
In the weeks since California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that a deal with Paramount Skydance would pave the way for a merger, industry representatives and studio executives have expressed doubts that a single management team could lead the 30-film slate called for in the deal.
Under the deal, the combined studios must release 30 films over two years, then 32 over the next three years. Sanctions are provided for if this threshold is not reached. For every film not made by Skydance, the studio must contribute $30 million to health and pension funds, distributed among the guilds. Additionally, a judge can force him to sell or spin off Miramax, which was behind the 2026 Paramount hit Skydance. Scary movie.
Of course, Goldberg and Greenstein aren’t completely alone in overseeing Paramount and Warners’ combined film slate, with studio labels actively run by veteran executives.
DC Studios, which is still in full recovery and coming off an unfortunate performance with Supergirlwill continue to be led by James Gunn and Peter Safran, while Richard Brener is believed to be safe for the time being at New Line, home to lucrative franchises like The conspiracy And The Lord of the Rings. And then there’s Warner’s new studio label, Clockwork, the shop run by a trio of former Neon executives. Clockwork is gearing up for its first major theatrical release, a remastering of the 1971 British film The Devilsreleased on October 16, and has proven to be a strong player in festival markets, landing Sean Baker and Park Chan-Wook’s next film. He’s also looking to get into the low-budget genre game.
“At the end of the day, you can’t have four presidents,” the Warners source said, weighing the idea of a collaboration between De Luca, Abdy, Greenstein and Goldberg. “You can’t share marketing and distribution. You can’t have people fighting over who gets Memorial Day, who gets the Super Bowl ads and who gets the big spenders.”
Greenstein and Goldberg’s tenure at Skydance is meat, potatoes, and franchise films, rather than the swings of De Luca and Abdy, known for providing studio space and big budgets to filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Alejandro Iñárritu, and Emerald Fennell, to varying degrees of commercial success.
De Luca and Abdy’s Warners thus filled the void left when Megan Ellison’s Annapurna, once the place where filmmakers like Anderson could find patronage and distribution, suspended its film operations. (Annapurna began reopening its doors for at least some business earlier this year.) And while Neon and A24 have certainly taken over the auteur role over the past half-decade, those studios can offer low-to-mid budgets, a far cry from the $100 million-plus that De Luca and Abdy greenlit.
It is these big changes on the part of brand managers that will mark the passage of De Luca and Abdy at Warner Bros., for better and for worse.
There was Sinnersthe Coogler vampire film that generated $370 million in ticket sales and Oscar glory. Coogler, who won the Oscar for original screenplay, repeatedly credited De Luca and Abdy’s support during the awards campaign, including in his Oscar speech. On the other end of the spectrum, there were films like Maggie Gyllenhaal’s. The Bride! ($23.9 million on a $90 million budget) and Cruise starrer Excavatorwhich is expected to open this weekend to a dismal $8-15 million on a budget of over $125 million.
Detractors have called the bosses overzealous with budgets at the expense of the biggest studios, while champions cast them as Medici in their commitment to ensuring that some of the best films of the past two years are brought to audiences. Hollywood, a city that has never particularly appreciated any shade of gray, will likely continue to argue along this binary.
Ultimately, it’s these strong relationships between filmmakers, as well as those with their powerful representatives (they’re known to be close to CAA’s Bryan Lourd), that De Luca and Abdy will take with them into their next act.
Alex Weprin contributed to this story.
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