Hollywood’s 2025 golden child Warner Bros. is back to making huge…
“One Battle After Another” is not only the title of last 12 months’s best image Oscar winner. It’s 2026’s fortune cookie message for Warner Bros., the studio that made it.
“You will fight one battle after another.”
And lose!
The studio’s downturn has been sharp and speedy. Hollywood declines often are. But it’s made a lot more noticeable by the Ellison in the room. Billionaire David Ellison’s Paramount’s acquisition of WB is caught in authorized limbo. He’s threatening to go away California. It’s a large number.
“Supergirl” was a major flop for Warner Bros. ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
Trying to discover a glad headline for this studio is tougher than the seek for a cancer remedy. They’re flailing round like a automotive dealership balloon man.
What a distinction a few months make. Last 12 months WB was basking in business adulation. They had major box-office and significant hits in the sensible horror movies “Sinners” and “Weapons” and an eventual best image winner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle.”
Their IP household smash (which also smashed my cerebellum) “A Minecraft Movie” grossed $961 million. And they notched a string of other boffo successes: “Final Destination: Bloodlines” ($317 million), “The Conjuring: Last Rites” ($499 million) and the shiny new “Superman” ($618 million) all carried out.
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Studio chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy had been so confident of their job, they did a media victory lap.
“This was David Zaslav‘s strategy from the beginning of restoring Warner Bros. to its days of glory, being the home for the world’s best filmmakers and putting those films in movie theaters around the globe,” De Luca, brown-nosing, told Deadline.
Er, I actually hope this isn’t David’s strategy.
Because it’s been flop metropolis over in Burbank. Duds and embarrassments galore.
A “Barbie” sequel may never get made. ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
One pending catastrophe hasn’t even hit the display screen yet. And may never will.
This week, the New York Times reported that a deal for a sequel to 2022’s “Barbie” — you realize, Warner’s mega-hit starring Margot Robbie that grossed $1.44 billion — has yet to be reached. The stars and filmmakers need more cash and better back-end offers. Duh! And if they’ll’t get their act together, in 4 months the rights revert back to toymaker Mattel.
Baffling. Hope these bozos don’t hardball themselves out of considered one of their only dependable franchises before their company merger is truly permitted.
They actually don’t need to bitter their relationship with Robbie. Their only sizable winner in 2026 thus far, despite the loud discourse, was “Wuthering Heights” ($241 million) with the Aussie actress and Jacob Elordi.
Audiences left “The Bride” at the altar. ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
But outdoors that and of a pair modestly worthwhile initiatives (“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” — abysmal — and “Evil Dead Burn”), it’s been “bombs away!” at WB.
Here’s a file of the harm: The zero-star torture chamber “The Bride,” the bungled “Supergirl” and “please lobotomize me!” “Mortal Kombat II.”
“Supergirl” is an particularly big drawback, because the new DC Studios just acquired off the floor only to crash on its second flight.
And the best end result for this weekend’s dino flick “The End of Oak Street” with Anne Hathaway is winding up in the “marginal success” pile.
I hear you saying, “But don’t they have a new Tom Cruise movie coming out? And a ‘Cat in the Hat’?”
“Mortal Kombat II” acquired KO’d at the box workplace. ©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
Why, sure, they do.
That Cruise film is called “Digger.” It’s an artsy satire from “Birdman” director Alejandro G. Iñárritu by which Tom performs a cartoony Texas oil tycoon who causes an environmental disaster.
That might go over properly at the Oscars, but it surely doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Americans will flip up their noses.
The animated “Cat in the Hat” might stroll the same golden highway as “The Lorax” ($351 million) or might go hat-in-hand like the disappointing last “Cat” flick with Mike Myers did 20 years in the past.
WB’s only sure-ish factor comes out at Christmas: “Dune: Part 3” with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. “Part 2” grossed a good $715 million in 2024, but it surely was launched in difficult March after strike-related delays.
The vacation timeframe will give the final chapter some spice.
For a change, a wonderful WB movie hits theaters in two weeks. Only, it’s not a WB film anymore.
Timothee Chalamet will return as Paul Atreides in “Dune: Part 3.” AP
That’s “Coyote vs. Acme,” a intelligent and hilarious “Looney Tunes” flick that the studio shelved three years in the past and took as a tax write-off.
A new distributor, Ketchup Entertainment, fortunately purchased it off them. And the movie presently holds a 97% on RottenTomatoes — far eclipsing any Warner release this 12 months.
The film, which it is best to see, makes an excoriating jab at its former dwelling immediately.
In the story, Acme is depicted as the evil maker of defective merchandise that do injurious hurt.
You can see the place this is going.
After the WB brand is displayed at the start, the digital camera zooms in on the positive print: “A wholly owned subsidiary of the Acme Corporation.”
Yep. That’s all, people!
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