Let’s just face it, the modern Warner Bros. studio loves money and hates media. The studio has become notorious for cancelling their properties and leaving no way for anyone to watch them anymore. So much of their properties and work are in danger of becoming lost media. We see it with the shows they remove and with the movies they create and then can. It is enough to make any film or TV buff sick. Much of the blame is placed on the one man running it all: David Zaslav.
Before Zaslav was in charge, movies were made and released. We consumed them or ignored them and then moved on with our lives. Zaslav became justifiably villainized with a number of anti-consumer decisions. These negative choices include tossing streaming-only animated shows and not giving anyway for them to enter home media, deleting completed films such as Batgirl, and threatening to get rid of Turner Classic Movies (a godsend for the twins of this blog site). This is not even including the making of asinine business decisions like changing HBO’s streaming service to Max, which does not hold the household brand name that HBO does.
Why does Zaslav do this? It all comes down to tax write offs and making more money for those at the top. It screws over the artists that put so much time and work into their projects that they want audiences to be able to see. These decisions have made Zaslav a villain to both audiences and content creators alike. While there has been lots of negative press in these situations, perhaps Zaslav’s ridicule has reached its peak with his latest evil plan: axing the movie Coyote vs. Acme.
I’ve written extensively about the Looney Tunes on this site. These writings have included my view on how Warner Bros. has been handling the Tunes as well as how I don’t think modern Looney Tunes products are representing the origins of their cartoons properly. You can read more about these thoughts here. Was I going to initially see Coyote vs. Acme? I cannot say. I probably would’ve waited for reviews to come out first. Would I almost definitely see it now out of spite if it were to mysteriously leak or get properly released? Yep.
I must admit, if this is all some ridiculous marketing ploy to ramp up interest in this movie then mission accomplished. Zaslav has made this Looney Tunes purist interested in a modern product. That being said, even if I weren’t interested in this movie one iota, I’d still want it to be released. All art that is completed with the consent of their creators deserves to be seen by the public. I wasn’t going to see Batgirl as I am not interested in superhero movies, but I was angered by the decision to axe it. Even if the movie was terrible (although I take those “didn’t test well” rumors with a big grain of salt), it deserved to be seen.
The “didn’t test well” argument about Batgirl cannot even be made with Coyote vs. Acme, as by several accounts, it tested very well. The actors, animators, and crew all put a lot of effort and heart into the movie and were genuinely excited for it to be released. Even if this movie were to take the Looney Tunes in a direction I personally don’t want to series to go in, it breaks my heart it cannot be viewed as it was intended.
Since I am a classic movie buff, let’s put some things into a historical perspective. Was the old studio system good? I think it led to some of the best movies ever made, but it certainly wasn’t well-designed for the filmmakers and actors who were almost ruled by moguls with an iron fist. Many of the moguls in charge of the old studios were greedy, mean, and abusive. That being said, they all had something important in common: they liked movies and wanted them to be made. Jack Warner was a jerk, but he was a jerk that wanted to make good movies. We often joke about how Howard Hughes was a terrible studio-head, yet he still wanted to make movies. Zaslav doesn’t want to make movies; he wants to make money. He wants to make money even if that means killing his own movies.
While a majority of the old studio moguls weren’t creative (Irving Thalberg, Carl Laemmle Jr., Dore Schary, and Darryl F. Zanuck are among the exceptions) as they were more businessmen, they still cared about movies. Louis B. Mayer was even known to cry watching some of the films he produced. Is Zaslav proud of any of the work his creative staff has made? Who’s to say, but he certainly doesn’t act like it. The studio moguls of old seem to be long gone.
What if Coyote vs. Acme didn’t perform well and didn’t review well? Well, you know what, Warner Bros. recently released a movie that made a billion freaking dollars (Barbie (2023)), so they could afford a loss here and there. This isn’t about the quality of the product; it is about the product’s right to exist and be seen. Warner Bros. now has the reputation as a studio that no one creative should work for or pitch to, as they will even cut something that already stems from an existing property which also happens to be the studio’s mascot series.
Zaslav seems to be a product of where Hollywood has been heading for the past few years now. They want money, even if it means having us all overpay for content. They will do whatever they can to get that money. Let’s hope that Coyote vs. Acme can get leaked, and a law can be enacted that if a studio wants to have a product as a tax write off, it needs to enter the public domain and cannot be deleted forever. As for Zaslav, let’s hope someone goes to the water tower and releases the Animaniacs. I know they’d love for him to be their special friend.
~Virginia
The Tinseltown Twins 