Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBD) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript - Page 4 of 7 - InvestingChannel

Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (NASDAQ:WBD) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

John Hodulik: Great. And in the indirect side of things?

David Zaslav: I think how everybody determines we’re focused on how we’re going to use our sports domestically and globally to create more shareholder value and stronger economics and help the leagues who all are very interested in reaching more people, more demographics. And so that’s our focus. And in addition, as you know, we have Bleacher which is the — and House of Highlights which are a huge funnel for us and a big opportunity. And we’re focused on how we use that in tandem because it is the largest platform for people under 30 in sport.

Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Jessica Reif with Bank of America.

Jessica Reif: Just on film, maybe just to go a little deeper. I mean Barbie was so outstanding. So are there lessons learned from having original IP and — like brilliant marketing. How does this shape your film strategy going forward? Can you talk about the impact to Max when it hits the platform? And then I guess, also in kind of the studio segment but you talked about selling to third parties which obviously makes a lot of sense, have you seen any change in demand given the strikes? Or can you just talk about overall demand for your content?

David Zaslav: Well, thanks, Jessica. Barbie is really important for us because — which we think one of the big unlocks of value is running this as one company. So we started having each of the businesses we meet together every week and all the creatives we meet together every week. We first got behind House of the Dragon and we had the dragons going across the bottom of all 30 channels and across the baseball field and the playoffs. And having our analysts, we got them the content in advance and they talk about it. We then did The Last of Us. This idea of super sizing by going — using the fact that we reach 30% or 40% of America on a given night. And at each of our — all of our platforms globally can have an impact. And we saw it with The Last of Us. We then brought the entire company together on Hogwarts Legacy and supersized it.

We don’t — we’re not doing it for everything. We’re trying to figure out what are the strategic assets and then we did it on Max. And we’re getting better at it. We’re just getting started. This is such a diverse set of amazing assets that how do we use them to help each other? And how do we use them also that we don’t have to go out and spend money when we already have huge marketing platforms that we could use on our own. And using some of — having Barkley and Shaq talk about something that they already love could is often more powerful than running commercial. And so it’s important for the confidence and the culture of the company that we can get behind these assets in a unique way. We’re a very unusual company with the assets that we have.

And it starts to build our muscle memory. And the idea that this can work. This idea of Barbie Summer and then every week what is everyone around the table going to do. And the cakes were pink on Food Network. We turned the fields pink across Europe. And it — of course, it started with an amazing movie by Greta and Margo going around the world. So it starts with great content, obviously. But this — but the fact that we can supersize it uniquely, globally, is a big deal for us. I think it will — we’re going to let — we really live in the motion picture window. Let this movie go to the motion picture window, play it up, build up that brand, then have it go into PVOD, take it through these windows of economics that have worked forever and we think work extremely well and then put it on Max.

And when it goes on Max, we think it will have a very good impact and that will be in the fall. JB?

Jean-Briac Perrette: Yes. I mean, Jessica, as you films, obviously movies, continue to be a very important part of the Max offering. I should remind people that in the U.S., obviously, we’re particularly more reliant on the Warner slate. Outside of the U.S., we are a multistudio service still, including the Warner slate. But film are incredibly important. And I will say what we’ve seen so far is — obviously, we sort of benefit on Max in both ways. Even content — even the titles that don’t necessarily perform as well as we wanted to them in the box office, by the time they get to Max because fewer people have seen them and they are newer to more people, they do well. And the bigger titles like we had in Batman last year or doing when it came to the service and we expect the same of Barbie that do incredibly well, people want to resee it. And so it continues to be incredibly important part of the business.

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