“One Battle After Another” is not only the title of last year’s best picture 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 rapid. Hollywood declines often are. But it’s made much more noticeable by the Ellison in the room. Billionaire David Ellison’s Paramount’s acquisition of WB is stuck in legal limbo. He’s threatening to leave California. It’s a mess.
Trying to find a happy headline for this studio is harder than the search for a cancer cure. They’re flailing around like a car dealership balloon man.
What a difference a few months make. Last year WB was basking in industry adulation. They had major box-office and critical hits in the smart horror films “Sinners” and “Weapons” and an eventual best picture winner in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle.”
Their IP family 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 performed.
Studio chairs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy were so confident in 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 certainly hope this isn’t David’s strategy.
Because it’s been flop city over in Burbank. Duds and embarrassments galore.
One pending disaster hasn’t even hit the screen yet. And might never will.
This week, the New York Times reported that a deal for a sequel to 2022’s “Barbie” — you know, Warner’s mega-hit starring Margot Robbie that grossed $1.44 billion — has yet to be reached. The stars and filmmakers want more money and better back-end deals. Duh! And if they can’t get their act together, in four months the rights revert back to toymaker Mattel.
Baffling. Hope these bozos don’t hardball themselves out of one of their only reliable franchises before their corporate merger is actually approved.
They really don’t want to sour their relationship with Robbie. Their only sizable winner in 2026 so far, despite the loud discourse, was “Wuthering Heights” ($241 million) with the Aussie actress and Jacob Elordi.
But outside that and of a couple modestly profitable projects (“Lee Cronin’s The Mummy” — abysmal — and “Evil Dead Burn”), it’s been “bombs away!” at WB.
Here’s a dossier of the damage: The zero-star torture chamber “The Bride,” the bungled “Supergirl” and “please lobotomize me!” “Mortal Kombat II.”
“Supergirl” is an especially big problem, because the new DC Studios just got off the ground only to crash on its second flight.
And the best outcome 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’?”
Why, yes, they do.
That Cruise movie is called “Digger.” It’s an artsy satire from “Birdman” director Alejandro G. Iñárritu in which Tom plays a cartoony Texas oil tycoon who causes an environmental catastrophe.
That could go over well at the Oscars, but it doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Americans will turn up their noses.
The animated “Cat in the Hat” could walk the same golden road as “The Lorax” ($351 million) or could go hat-in-hand like the disappointing last “Cat” flick with Mike Myers did 20 years ago.
WB’s only sure-ish thing comes out at Christmas: “Dune: Part 3” with Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya. “Part 2” grossed a decent $715 million in 2024, but it was released in tricky March after strike-related delays.
The holiday time frame will give the final chapter some spice.
For a change, an excellent WB film hits theaters in two weeks. Only, it’s not a WB movie anymore.
That’s “Coyote vs. Acme,” a clever and hilarious “Looney Tunes” flick that the studio shelved three years ago and took as a tax write-off.
A new distributor, Ketchup Entertainment, thankfully bought it off them. And the film currently holds a 97% on RottenTomatoes — far eclipsing any Warner release this year.
The movie, which you should see, makes an excoriating jab at its former home right away.
In the story, Acme is depicted as the evil maker of faulty products that do injurious harm.
You can see where this is going.
After the WB logo is displayed at the start, the camera zooms in on the fine print: “A wholly owned subsidiary of the Acme Corporation.”
Yep. That’s all, folks!
