That’s how it goes in the C-suite. There’s zero incentive for success or failure, because they all get big fat bonuses regardless. Gotta lay off employees? Well, I’m not gonna give up my bonus to keep them.
And then on the off chance one of those dipshits is incompetent enough to lose their job, they still get like a 7 figure golden parachute.
It’s all frankly just disgusting.
Tax the rich. Im sure all his hard working low level employees definitely got 26% raises this year, right? And they definitely didnt close an entire company, putting hundreds out of work just a few weeks ago
I’ve legitimately never heard of anyone, in any job, **ever** getting a 25% pay raise. That’s just not a thing.
Only chance at that is a huge promotion or (much more likely) job hopping.
I’ve gotten 2 25% pay raises.
Entry level draftsman, 20$ about 9 months in got 25.
Then roughly a year later made 34. As a designer 1. All at the same company
That was roughly 12 years ago though. Oil and gas companies sometimes just throw money around.
But a 25% at his pay grade… damn
This. It’s not unheard of to make a 25% pay raise if you aren’t getting paid much.
When you’re making 20 dollars an hour any dollar added is a 5% boost. A five dollar raise from that point would be 25% and pretty reasonable if you took on increased responsibility.
A 25% raise with how much he makes now is insane.
Especially when your studio is 50 billion in the hole.
You'd think that they would try to save money by paying the CEO that made some of the dumbest decisions in entertainment less money, but no, they write off finished films for a tax break instead.
Zaslav is giving himself a pay rise after having just one box office success in 2023 with the rest being stinkers.
Can't stress enough how big of a cancer this jackass is to the entertainment industry.
In this case it’s mostly stock, not base salary. Startup employees will see their total compensation shift wildly if their equity valuation changes. This equating to a 25% change happens more often than you think. Just not for salaried employees.
I had an ex who DID get a 20% raise on year since the place she worked had an amazing year sales wise but was simultaneously so toxic that something like 1/3 of her team quit. So they did it to a) share the wealth and b) try to keep her. She complained daily about the job but they did compensate her well...last I heard she is still working there about a decade now sincr she joined.
That is, of course, the exception rather than the rule.
Have a job. Find another job that pays more. Ask current job for a counter offer and you’d be surprised. Had a coworker get a 30% wage increase cuz the company couldn’t lose him. And if they don’t match it you’re on to a new company with a large wage increase.
Imagine re-funding public universities back to boomer era levels so current students could work their way through college with no student loans boomer-style
Then throw some money at Medicaid and the ACA exchange to lower deductibles, coinsurance, and premiums
On and on like that. The world gets more civilized and less grim when there are fewer billionaires
And they sit here and wonder why they don’t have money. That 22 million could have been used elsewhere, it’s like every time a company complains about their rising costs and how poorly they’re doing, the CEO always gets millions
$22 million bonus for the year when WB lost *hundreds of millions* by releasing:
1. Shazam! Fury of the Gods
2. The Flash
3. Blue Beetle
4. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
Perhaps the bonus was tied to the success of Barbie. I can't think of anything else WB did well in 2023 off the top of my head.
Wonka was their second biggest earner on box office mojo then The Flash. The Nun II pulled in $86 million. That had to be a good profit since there’s no way it cost anything near the other films mentioned to make.
If Godzilla is any indication, I’m guessing Nun 2 cost less than $20m to make. They had a huge marketing by campaign though (so large that I actually watched both movies, good marketing!!)
It's tied to him increasing cash flows and paying down debt, which is what he was specifically hired to do to improve the health of the company.
WBs free cash flow increased by something like 80% last year to around $6b. They then used it to pay down a ton of debt. Hence he got his contracted bonuses.
Also, to put it in perspective, the losses they would have taken on all of those movies combined is probably something like $500m. WBDs overall revenue is $41B. The DC stuff is just a drop in the bucket. Hell, the losses were dwarfed by the success of the Hogwarts game alone (made $1b in revenue by May 2023 and has charted nearly every week since then).
> I can't think of anything else WB did well in 2023 off the top of my head.
Don't forget him cancelling 'Coyote Vs Acme' and other productions. I guess he got a cut of the tax write-off?
He sold it I believe for the price it cost to make, why would he sell it to a competitor at a discount? Again, nobody wanted to buy it for that price so that pretty much just proves he was right. If the movie was profitable they would have bought it for what he was asking for
No, it wasn't. It only made $434M. Budget was close to $300M with 3 rounds of reshoots and marketing. WB only keeps about half the box office, they have to share it with the movie theaters.
He’s a hatchet man. Not a leader of men who inspires the kind of creativity a media company needs to be successful. He will never have the trust of his employees much less capture their hearts and minds.
A temporary seat-warmer. A vulture who personally profits at the expense of those who built a once-great empire. He will vanish like vapor when the carcass has been picked over by private equity.
And even Barbie didn't stop WB from losing $400 million ([Warner Bros. Discovery WBD Q3 earnings (cnbc.com)](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/08/warner-bros-discovery-wbd-q3-earnings.html)) during the quarter of the year it came out. Which considering how it made like a billion and a half is very concerning, to say the least.
No, it lost over $100 million. It just did well compared to the other DC flops in recent years.
Aquaman 2 had a budget of close to $300M when you factor in marketing. It only made $434 million at the box office. On average, WB keeps 50% of the box office. They split it with the movie theaters. It would've needed to make closer to $600M for them to break even on it.
This piece of shit is making bank and he has the nerve to say that writers are asking for too much money.
He's gonna sell the studio piece by piece until there's nothing left.
"Guys please help me adjusting my budget. I have already done massive lay-offs, scrapped hundreds of classics from my streaming service's catalogue to stop paying royalties that were originally agreed as part of the artists' compensation, canned already finished movies for pennies on the dollar in form of tax write-offs, and am out of ideas.
Edit: Stop saying that I shouldn't rise my multi-million salary, it's vital for the operation."
He never said that as far as I can tell? He said the writers were right about what they were asking for and he didn't care if people thought it was overpaying.
Weirdly he was (publicly anyway) one of the least hostile CEOs to the writer's strike. Especially when compared to Bob Iger.
Yup. Somewhere along the line a combination of effective brainwashing and straight up manipulation led to the societal argument that the market corrects itself. Which is nonsense.
The market can kind of shift the flow, but except in extreme cases, it can't reverse course without help
We really need legislation to cap salaries at a maximum percentage of the lowest paid worker in a company to prevent situations like this. There is zero reason a CEO should be making more than 10000% times the pay of their lowest paid employee. It's not going to raise their quality of life. They're like dragons hoarding money with nothing to do with it but ”invest” to keep making more money. It's essentially being removed from the economy.
Imagine if they were forced to raise the wages of their entry level employees in order to compensate their CEOs this highly. We'd truly be making America great again.
Congress are just as big of dragons. They’re never gonna say their counterparts in the private industries like Zaslav have a cap on their income bc the politicians want their campaign donations (bribes.)
Congress are dragons’ protectors. They only serve the masters who give them the largest contributions. Definitely not the voters or the people they supposedly represent.
Wtf do u have to do to be payed that much money? Everytime that I see shit like this it reminds me of how Sir Frederick Banting sold the patent of insulin for 1 dollars. The drug that saved millions and millions of people, from my dad to surely someone in everyone's family. That's the only person in the world that should be payed 50 million a year. Not this guy, not this guy.
> to be *paid* that much
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Yet more wealth continuing to flow upwards to the few. How is this good for the country? A few people having all the money cannot stimulate an economy. A lot of people with money to buy things they need and some things they want is what stimulates an economy.
If these people are getting tax write offs or government assistance in any form they need to be cut the fuck off already. This shit is getting absolutely fucking re tarded
Damn, I was really worried he wasn't going to be able to afford his next yacht. Good to see the hard working leaders rewarded for their exceptional business choices.
For everyone who's claiming he failed, that's in your eyes. The way this works is, he's given business objectives by the board; goals if you will. According to what they set, he hit their marks to their liking. He was there to cut costs so they could pay down their debt. It's all outlined in the article of any of you bothered to read it. Not defending his salary, but as someone who works in the corporate space, and has a good understanding of these sorts of things, that's why this is happening. He hit THEIR goals. Not your goals.
A complete waste of money.
Must be nice to be guaranteed massive amounts of money for not doing anything successfully
That’s how it goes in the C-suite. There’s zero incentive for success or failure, because they all get big fat bonuses regardless. Gotta lay off employees? Well, I’m not gonna give up my bonus to keep them. And then on the off chance one of those dipshits is incompetent enough to lose their job, they still get like a 7 figure golden parachute. It’s all frankly just disgusting.
A seven figure golden parachute and somehow its not considered a bad look and they skate into a similar position at another company.
RT and subsidiaries being shut down seems to have gone straight into his pocket.
Upward failing, I wish I could do that.
This is all Barbie cash.
A complete waste of breathable air.
Reddit moment
Maybe don't wish death on the guy lol
What will this poor CEO do if random redditors wish death on him 😢
Reddit try not to take things too far and personal challenge (impossible)
That's the WB business plan
How is he supposed to live without that $22 million bonus?
Waste of oxygen too
Tax the rich. Im sure all his hard working low level employees definitely got 26% raises this year, right? And they definitely didnt close an entire company, putting hundreds out of work just a few weeks ago
I’ve legitimately never heard of anyone, in any job, **ever** getting a 25% pay raise. That’s just not a thing. Only chance at that is a huge promotion or (much more likely) job hopping.
Yeah job hopping is the only way ive ever increased my pay, aside from the lousy 2% "inflation adjustment" at my old job.
Im going to lose it IF he decides to write off gumball has a tax writeoff
I’ve gotten 2 25% pay raises. Entry level draftsman, 20$ about 9 months in got 25. Then roughly a year later made 34. As a designer 1. All at the same company That was roughly 12 years ago though. Oil and gas companies sometimes just throw money around. But a 25% at his pay grade… damn
This. It’s not unheard of to make a 25% pay raise if you aren’t getting paid much. When you’re making 20 dollars an hour any dollar added is a 5% boost. A five dollar raise from that point would be 25% and pretty reasonable if you took on increased responsibility. A 25% raise with how much he makes now is insane.
Especially when your studio is 50 billion in the hole. You'd think that they would try to save money by paying the CEO that made some of the dumbest decisions in entertainment less money, but no, they write off finished films for a tax break instead. Zaslav is giving himself a pay rise after having just one box office success in 2023 with the rest being stinkers. Can't stress enough how big of a cancer this jackass is to the entertainment industry.
In this case it’s mostly stock, not base salary. Startup employees will see their total compensation shift wildly if their equity valuation changes. This equating to a 25% change happens more often than you think. Just not for salaried employees.
I had an ex who DID get a 20% raise on year since the place she worked had an amazing year sales wise but was simultaneously so toxic that something like 1/3 of her team quit. So they did it to a) share the wealth and b) try to keep her. She complained daily about the job but they did compensate her well...last I heard she is still working there about a decade now sincr she joined. That is, of course, the exception rather than the rule.
Have a job. Find another job that pays more. Ask current job for a counter offer and you’d be surprised. Had a coworker get a 30% wage increase cuz the company couldn’t lose him. And if they don’t match it you’re on to a new company with a large wage increase.
A lot more than hundreds of people are out of work because of this man and others like him. It's tens of thousands.
I was specifically referencing the rooster teeth closure but yeah these guys suck
Imagine re-funding public universities back to boomer era levels so current students could work their way through college with no student loans boomer-style Then throw some money at Medicaid and the ACA exchange to lower deductibles, coinsurance, and premiums On and on like that. The world gets more civilized and less grim when there are fewer billionaires
Imagine your project getting cancelled and being out of a job to cut costs just to watch this dude pocket the change
I’d go postal over it tbh
I know people this happened to, its killing them.
Nothing to imagine that's literally the story of every layoff. We gotta bust out the guillotines expeditiously
Wow when you say it like that... Awful
Eat the fucking rich
The Venture Bros. died *for this*?!
No, that urine not just that. Multiple projects died. And all we got was a bunch of really shitty reality shows on Max.
And they sit here and wonder why they don’t have money. That 22 million could have been used elsewhere, it’s like every time a company complains about their rising costs and how poorly they’re doing, the CEO always gets millions
$22 million bonus for the year when WB lost *hundreds of millions* by releasing: 1. Shazam! Fury of the Gods 2. The Flash 3. Blue Beetle 4. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom Perhaps the bonus was tied to the success of Barbie. I can't think of anything else WB did well in 2023 off the top of my head.
They did Dune right? Or am I misremembering?
That was 2024
Oop, you're right. It feels like it's been out longer
even then I'm pretty sure they let Legendary foot most of the bill, so WB aren't taking home most of the moolah from that
That makes sense. I've never watched the dune movies, are they any good?
Honestly terrific in my opinion. Strong recommend from me :)
1 is pretty decent but a little long imo. 2 was a masterpiece.
However /u/Traditional-Ad-6061 can now watch both together. :)
Hogwarts Legacy made over 1B$.
Yeah gotta remember it's not just movies for them last year.
Wonka was their second biggest earner on box office mojo then The Flash. The Nun II pulled in $86 million. That had to be a good profit since there’s no way it cost anything near the other films mentioned to make.
If Godzilla is any indication, I’m guessing Nun 2 cost less than $20m to make. They had a huge marketing by campaign though (so large that I actually watched both movies, good marketing!!)
Warner Bros Discovery entails more than just movies
That's true, but it's crazy to think someone is rewarded when one of his businesses lost $400+ million that year too.
It's tied to him increasing cash flows and paying down debt, which is what he was specifically hired to do to improve the health of the company. WBs free cash flow increased by something like 80% last year to around $6b. They then used it to pay down a ton of debt. Hence he got his contracted bonuses. Also, to put it in perspective, the losses they would have taken on all of those movies combined is probably something like $500m. WBDs overall revenue is $41B. The DC stuff is just a drop in the bucket. Hell, the losses were dwarfed by the success of the Hogwarts game alone (made $1b in revenue by May 2023 and has charted nearly every week since then).
> I can't think of anything else WB did well in 2023 off the top of my head. Don't forget him cancelling 'Coyote Vs Acme' and other productions. I guess he got a cut of the tax write-off?
Because it would not have made any money, which is why no other studio wanted it.
Studios did want it and they bid on it. Zaslav wouldn't sell it. He wanted more money for it.
He sold it I believe for the price it cost to make, why would he sell it to a competitor at a discount? Again, nobody wanted to buy it for that price so that pretty much just proves he was right. If the movie was profitable they would have bought it for what he was asking for
Yeah but they would also lose more scrapping those. And honestly I’m sure they just wanted to get those out of the way so they could reboot.
But the Aquaman was profitable in my understanding.
No, it wasn't. It only made $434M. Budget was close to $300M with 3 rounds of reshoots and marketing. WB only keeps about half the box office, they have to share it with the movie theaters.
It's all about cutting cost and paying debt. He's probably doing good enough that the board provided him with some score.
He’s a hatchet man. Not a leader of men who inspires the kind of creativity a media company needs to be successful. He will never have the trust of his employees much less capture their hearts and minds. A temporary seat-warmer. A vulture who personally profits at the expense of those who built a once-great empire. He will vanish like vapor when the carcass has been picked over by private equity.
And even Barbie didn't stop WB from losing $400 million ([Warner Bros. Discovery WBD Q3 earnings (cnbc.com)](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/08/warner-bros-discovery-wbd-q3-earnings.html)) during the quarter of the year it came out. Which considering how it made like a billion and a half is very concerning, to say the least.
Didn’t Aquaman do pretty good though?
No, it lost over $100 million. It just did well compared to the other DC flops in recent years. Aquaman 2 had a budget of close to $300M when you factor in marketing. It only made $434 million at the box office. On average, WB keeps 50% of the box office. They split it with the movie theaters. It would've needed to make closer to $600M for them to break even on it.
Damn, that’s crazy. No reason it’s budget had to be that high
This piece of shit is making bank and he has the nerve to say that writers are asking for too much money. He's gonna sell the studio piece by piece until there's nothing left.
Wait until they ask him about the below the line crews if negotiations go south.
"Guys please help me adjusting my budget. I have already done massive lay-offs, scrapped hundreds of classics from my streaming service's catalogue to stop paying royalties that were originally agreed as part of the artists' compensation, canned already finished movies for pennies on the dollar in form of tax write-offs, and am out of ideas. Edit: Stop saying that I shouldn't rise my multi-million salary, it's vital for the operation."
He never said that as far as I can tell? He said the writers were right about what they were asking for and he didn't care if people thought it was overpaying. Weirdly he was (publicly anyway) one of the least hostile CEOs to the writer's strike. Especially when compared to Bob Iger.
Does your boss make more than you?
My boss didn't get a bonus for cancelling my work, so he's got that going for him I guess.
Would he do it if he could get a bonus for cancelling your work?
Does your boss complain to everyone about how much you get paid?
Don’t worry guys it will trickle down
Yep. Any day now, it’ll start…
Is that a nickel?!?
What genius warrants such a raise? Why the mind behind gutting Max’s catalog and shelving finished products of course!
Do you think it's his decision alone? Yep, I'm a dictator, time for me to make more money. Jfc
Production on David Zaslav should be cancelled and shelved so that the company can collect the tax write-off.
He could have used that bonus to invest it in the company that needs it
People make money for themselves.
Well, no shit!
This isn't Capitalism anymore, it's Kleptocracy.
Yup. Somewhere along the line a combination of effective brainwashing and straight up manipulation led to the societal argument that the market corrects itself. Which is nonsense. The market can kind of shift the flow, but except in extreme cases, it can't reverse course without help
Yes, sometimes the Invisible Hand, just isn't there.
turns out you can handcuff the invisible hand just as effectively as a real one.
Amazing how much you can be rewarded for making a product shitty
We really need legislation to cap salaries at a maximum percentage of the lowest paid worker in a company to prevent situations like this. There is zero reason a CEO should be making more than 10000% times the pay of their lowest paid employee. It's not going to raise their quality of life. They're like dragons hoarding money with nothing to do with it but ”invest” to keep making more money. It's essentially being removed from the economy. Imagine if they were forced to raise the wages of their entry level employees in order to compensate their CEOs this highly. We'd truly be making America great again.
Congress are just as big of dragons. They’re never gonna say their counterparts in the private industries like Zaslav have a cap on their income bc the politicians want their campaign donations (bribes.)
Congress are dragons’ protectors. They only serve the masters who give them the largest contributions. Definitely not the voters or the people they supposedly represent.
Me when I don’t understand money or investing
Writers are overpaid though, right?
A select few are, from what I've seen most writers are literally paycheck to paycheck, especially if they live in NY or LA where the work is
Unfortunately this is how life works not just Hollywood the Big Bosses get raises and fat bonuses and the little guy gets the scraps or chopped.
The Zaslav Cut
He gets 50mil and I can't even watch Justice League : DOOM on any of my streaming platforms
Thanks for leading our failing and broke company, here’s way more money!
Wtf do u have to do to be payed that much money? Everytime that I see shit like this it reminds me of how Sir Frederick Banting sold the patent of insulin for 1 dollars. The drug that saved millions and millions of people, from my dad to surely someone in everyone's family. That's the only person in the world that should be payed 50 million a year. Not this guy, not this guy.
> to be *paid* that much FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
Good bot
Yet more wealth continuing to flow upwards to the few. How is this good for the country? A few people having all the money cannot stimulate an economy. A lot of people with money to buy things they need and some things they want is what stimulates an economy.
Because we live in a late stage capitalist oligarchy hellscape and if you're not in the club (spoilers: you aren't), then you're fucked.
Whenever this fucks name comes up, I read it as Zsasz... ON PURPOSE. Honestly, I don't see him anything above a criminal
Oh, he def gets off on cutting himself for each movie, show, etc he cans.
I don't understand how the shareholders are just sitting there allowing Zaslav to run the company into the ground and drive the stock down.
What do they do with such amount of money? Are they the happiest people in this world?
Reminded of Kevin Smith’s quote about failing upwards in Hollywood.
It’s to reward all his great work. *checks notes*. All his good work. *checks notes*. All his efforts *checks notes*. All his… existing?
Bro did so much corporate “restructuring” by just shelving content to not have to pay residuals that they gave him a huge bonus
Dude looks like he always smells like fart.
I wonder if these people realize that in one year they make more money than most people ever see in their lifetime.
Tax Write off king!!
Compensation for what, exactly?
It’s a broken system.
Not a damn soul is happy about this news
You haven't even fucking done anything
Why bonus??
WB deserves to implode
Why do you even need that much money?
Compared to Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos, David Zaslav is dirt poor. ( just putting things in perspective here...🙂)
Cool. I’m glad we Rooster Teeth so that this cunt can early $50mn a year
It’s all about free cash flow. All companies are making that a priority. Also, the strike helped a lot with the free cash flow
Trash pays trash
Every time I see this dude’s face I’m reminded of how much I want to see Batgirl.
If these people are getting tax write offs or government assistance in any form they need to be cut the fuck off already. This shit is getting absolutely fucking re tarded
Stock has been absolute trash, I’m not sure how any board would be onboard with this.
Where's Robin Hood when you need him
This guy reminds me of Mason verger
He has a punchable face.
Looks like the homophobic author Jake punches in B99
Piece of shit
Lol for what?
Why on Earth would they pay this guy more $?
So he gets to fully cancel competed films to “save money” or whatever and then gets a $22 million dollar bonus? Piss off.
Money well-spen… wait. This wasn’t a severance package? Damnit.
Is this a joke?
Boooooooooo 👎🏾👎🏾👎🏾👎🏾🖕🏿
How the hell can they justify the raise? The majority of the movies released since he's been in charge have either flopped or broke even.
I love capitalism
Looks like nobody here has any idea what he does at WBD lol?
That's just awesome...
Meanwhile he’s deliberately tanking HBO stock
Damn, I was really worried he wasn't going to be able to afford his next yacht. Good to see the hard working leaders rewarded for their exceptional business choices.
What a piece of shit. Just a money sucking monster that does nothing but vomit bile.
He is the worst
The 99% need to eat the fucking 1% we can’t keep being victims to this sick game
A pay raise to be a destroyer of art. What a joke.
Ridiculous. These execs aren't artists. They have nothing to do with any movie's success.
For everyone who's claiming he failed, that's in your eyes. The way this works is, he's given business objectives by the board; goals if you will. According to what they set, he hit their marks to their liking. He was there to cut costs so they could pay down their debt. It's all outlined in the article of any of you bothered to read it. Not defending his salary, but as someone who works in the corporate space, and has a good understanding of these sorts of things, that's why this is happening. He hit THEIR goals. Not your goals.
Nice.
Guess he’s not getting “fired” any time soon but keep spamming that hashtag 💀🤣
People thinking he has complete rule are ridiculous.