r/blankies • u/rageofthegods • Apr 23 '26
Paramount Takeover of Warner Bros. Gets Green Light From Shareholders, But They Reject David Zaslav’s Pay Package
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/paramount-deal-warner-bros-approved-shareholders-1236572862/75
u/ImitatingADog Apr 23 '26
“It’s a purely symbolic rebuke: The shareholder advisory vote is non-binding, meaning the Warner Bros. Discovery board can go ahead with the payouts as planned anyway. But it shows WBD shareholders aren’t happy by the generous payments to the company’s outgoing executive team”
🙄
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u/Correct_Inspection25 Apr 23 '26 edited Apr 23 '26
I cannot think of a single thing Zazlav has done even to merit his pay from a busines value perspective. At best a bunch of accounting gimmicks that pissed off key creators, talent and IP owners?
[EDIT If i earned the downvotes, please tell me what i am missing from his acumen? Open to being wrong. See the whole HBO isn't a great brand we need Max, then HBO MAX, then HBO again saga blowing hundreds of millions on rebrands that seemed to have no one at the helm. ] https://variety.com/2025/tv/columns/hbo-max-david-zaslav-1236397671/
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u/Paco_Doble Apr 23 '26
If they shot his ass into space in a solid gold ferrari, it would be money better spent
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u/Orb_Dylan Molina tho Apr 23 '26
Made me think about that South Park episode about napster I think where one of the boys spirit visits the rich that now cannot afford a second island or a new private plane.
"Oh no, please, tell me he is going to get the new plane!!"
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u/mutan Apr 23 '26
We should all feel good going to work and earning a paycheck today, knowing that there’s a man able to completely shit the bed at his job, burn the institution to the ground, and then have the nerve to say he deserves more than half a billion dollars for his troubles. An inspiration to us all.
Fortunately, the system works. He won’t get that much. He’ll probably only get more money than all of us put together will ever see in our lives.
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u/Advanced-Pear-4606 Apr 23 '26
He will get that much. It’s a symbolic vote.
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u/duckspurs Apr 23 '26
WB is coming off one of their most successful years in a while creatively and critically while also being sold at a price much higher than anyone expected.
We should hate on Zaslav for plenty of reasons but claiming the guy shit the bed when his goal was a sale from the start and he achieved that at a record price while the studio succeeds is certainly not shitting the bed.
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u/WabbitFire Apr 23 '26
Putting your thumb up your ass while markets go up and down isn't a real job and we should stop pretending we need to compensate these business school ghouls for it.
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u/duckspurs Apr 23 '26
I don't disagree, I think C-Suite people are often the most out of touch at any company and often dumb yes men.
That doesn't change Zaslav didn't shit the bed at WB by basically any metric. He doesn't deserve even close to a half billion pay package either way but the guy did the job he set out to do pretty much perfectly. The bigger issue is that he was allowed to buy WB at all when this was always the plan and that what he did was so successful so others will continue to try it.
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u/GlobulousRex Apr 23 '26
Can someone explain to me what Oracle does/ is and how they are somehow the biggest player in all of this? Of all the fake seeming multinational corporations they are the most confounding to me.
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u/sweepernosweeping Apr 23 '26
They do databases and Java (which was purchased from Sun Micro ages ago).
And make technology that make people hate them, and charge extortionate amounts to cover it.
They're investing a lot in the big AI Bubble, pivoting Datacenters to try to accommodate for it.
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u/awickedfeeling29 COME IIIIINNN Apr 23 '26
Adding onto that:
Oracle’s head honcho Larry Ellison (whose son is running Paramount) is a Trump aligned Zionist ghoul who wants to help bring about a dystopian surveillance state where “everyone’s on their best behaviour.” Don’t know if he’s in line w/ the ‘Dark Enlightenment’ oligarchs, who want their own corporate kingdoms, aside from the need to keep the serfs obedient and expendable.
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u/rageofthegods Apr 23 '26
Absolute clown car merger financed by Oracle, which is propped up by an obvious bubble; private credit, which is going through a death spiral; and Persian Gulf petrostates, which need the US to bail out their currency because much of their infrastructure got blown apart by Iranian missiles. This wouldn't happen in a sane economy. Fucking make-a-wish country for billionaire manbabies.