Warner Bros. Insiders: Quiet Panic as Muscle Memory Kicks In — With One Big Asterisk
It's déjà vu — only now, studio veterans can see which jobs survive before the next axe even swings. Plus: my scoop on a new Netflix series
I cover TV from L.A. I wrote about how a combined Paramount-Warners could challenge Netflix, the 10 showrunners who define the TV market now and the Amazon TV mess as Peter Friedlander takes over. Email me at lesley.goldberg@theankler.com
Hello on a tough day for Hollywood, Series Business readers.
Before we get into today’s column — which explores more of what’s happening inside Warner Bros. Discovery right now — I have a SCOOP about the new show Netflix announced this morning. Even amid all this disruption and contraction, people are creating and developing and coming up with fresh storytelling. They’re even getting into bidding wars over hot projects.
Sources tell me that Rabbit, Rabbit, the hostage thriller starring Adam Driver and from the writer of Top Gun: Maverick, Peter Craig, was taken out earlier this month and drew interest from all the major streamers. After a meeting with HBO, Apple was slated to hear the pitch next, but Netflix took the project off the table with a straight-to-series order for the show from MRC, which has Adolescence’s Emmy-winning helmer Philip Barantini set to direct and exec produce.
Rabbit, Rabbit revolves around an escaped convict cornered by law enforcement at a truck stop who takes hostages as he attempts to bargain for his freedom with a veteran FBI crisis negotiator trained in “tactical empathy,” according to the logline. (It’s unclear which role Driver will play.) Craig (The Batman, The Town) created the original property and will write and serve as showrunner. Barantini and his It’s All Made Up Productions partner Samantha Beddoe also exec produce alongside Craig and Bryan Unkeless’ (I, Tonya) Night Owl banner. The deal stems from Craig’s first-look pact with MRC, the studio behind Peacock’s Poker Face and Netflix’s Ozark.
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Now on to the main event…
On Monday, mere days after hanging a “for sale” sign, Warner Bros. Discovery said in a release that its TV-focused spinoff, Discovery Global — set to complete its separation from the mothership by April — will host its “inaugural” upfront presentation to Madison Avenue ad buyers on May 13, 2026. The upfront planning arrives as executives tout a “bold new chapter” for WBD with the split of its Streaming and Studios division from Discovery Global’s linear assets (CNN, HGTV and Discovery, among scores of others).
It’s a corporate step that signals “business as usual” — the classic choreography for any company on the auction block. But this time, as Warner Bros. stares down what would be its fifth owner in 20 years — an extraordinary feat even in M&A-obsessed America — the atmosphere has undeniably shifted.
While rounds of buyers before coveted Warner Bros. for the glossy sheen of its history, talent and prestige, in the seven years since AT&T dreamed of pumping top Hollywood programming into phones on its service, AI has entered the chat, YouTube is now the biggest streaming service on living room TVs, and advertisers are pouring gobs more money into the creator economy.
Now, with Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison having made three offers (and counting), and everyone from Netflix and Amazon to Comcast said to be kicking tires on all or part of the company, Warner Bros.’ wealth of franchise IP and impressive talent deals — as I detailed last week — could powerfully future-proof whoever actually acquires it… if only the future itself were stable.
This morning, Paramount Skydance began its 1,000 U.S. layoffs (with another 1,000 to come before year’s end). This week alone, Fifth Season trimmed 10 percent of its workforce, Amazon confirmed 14,000 people would lose their jobs (including execs in the film and TV businesses) and Disneyland cut 100 from its crew. Even Hollywood’s most coveted assets are being reshaped by a business that can’t stop contracting. Ellison himself, in his memo to staff today, called it “evolving priorities.”
As of this writing, multiple divisions across Paramount were seeing the impact of these priorities in the first of the two massive rounds of layoffs. CBS News was hit first, with multiple programming cancellations and the closure of its bureau in Johannesburg.
Still, “most of WBD has been through this,” says one source with strong ties to the company. “The company has been flipped and flopped so many times that everyone is just like, ‘We’ll see what happens.’ Everyone just has their head down.”
But even the most blasé “been there, done that” skeptics inside the Burbank hallways can’t conceal the stomach-dropping question that keeps coming up: what does survival look like in this moment?
After talking to scores of insiders, here’s what I found:
We’re in a new “for sale” era: How it’s playing out on the lot — from “business as usual” memos to whispered odds on which divisions actually make it to closing
Who’s safe, who’s exposed: The departments, job types and exec tiers seen as most vulnerable under any new owner and the patterns we’ve seen from recent layoffs (including at Paramount)
How morale is holding up — and the small, surprising reasons some staffers see an upside
What the Discovery split really means: A structural preview of the post-sale Warner Bros. — leaner, cheaper, and less Hollywood
Glimmers of optimism: From the success of HBO Max’s The Pitt to new investment in content
Generational bottleneck: Why the newest class of Warners employees isn’t waiting for permission anymore.
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