Hollywood Reporter; Warner Bros. Movie Chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy: Don’t Count Us Out Just Yet

Story from Hollywood Reporter:

For weeks, it wasn’t a matter of if Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy were getting fired — it was when. The Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairmen and co-CEOs had been put on executive death watch, the Hollywood equivalent of dead men walking. Anonymous quotes were flying. Pundits were counting down. Their replacements were being openly speculated about — reportedly even interviewed. And then came … a vampire.

The box office success of Sinners — Ryan Coogler’s genre-bending bloodsucker epic — didn’t just deliver a much-needed win for original filmmaking. It may have saved the jobs of the veteran execs who greenlit it. Coming on the heels of A Minecraft Movie’s record-breaking launch, Sinners pulled in $48 million domestically in its opening weekend and won over both critics and audiences, offering what looks a lot like a last-minute reprieve for the embattled duo.

Or is it?

Abdy and De Luca had stayed mostly silent as speculation over their future reached a fever pitch. Sources close to the pair say they were disappointed by the half-hearted platitudes offered by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav amid the firestorm. “No one bats a thousand,” adds a source inside the studio. “But there was a crisis of confidence after Joker 2.”

Then last weekend as Sinners‘ first box office numbers rolled in, the executives decided to speak — addressing the runouts and their futures at the company — in a candid interview with The Hollywood Reporter.

“We kind of knew we had the goods just in terms of having watched the director’s cut,” De Luca says of Sinners, speaking from his house on a sunny Easter Sunday. “But to have the audience validate that — that’s really what’s giving us the most joy today. We’re also happy that as an original swing, it’s worked out and we hope it inspires the other studios to take more original swings because that’s how you get new franchises and keep the industry refreshed.”

To say that the victory was hard-earned is an understatement. For the better part of two months, the press had been brutal. A Vulture piece warned that the rights deal they struck with Coogler on Sinners “could end” the studio system as we know it. Bloomberg reported that Zaslav was already auditioning their successors. Puck implied they were hemorrhaging money on prestige projects, citing $160 million for Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another (out Sept. 26) and up to $100 million for Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride (March 6, 2026).

With one headline after another, the narrative was sealed: De Luca and Abdy were toast. Until, that is, they weren’t.

The first hint of a turnaround came with Minecraft, which stunned with $163 million domestic and $313 million global in its opening weekend. But Sinners, an original screenplay written, directed and produced by Coogler, was seen as a truer test of their creative instincts — a big swing that, if it whiffed, might’ve been their last.

Still, the duo isn’t pretending it’s all sunshine and studio lot lattes. “Until a film comes out, there’s going to be a certain amount of chatter and wondering,” says De Luca. “And sometimes that can lead to gossip and speculation and that can escape the walls of your company and leak out to what I affectionately call the snark industrial complex. And let’s face it, the clickbait industry does not trade on positive headlines.”

Abdy puts it more plainly: “I just wish people would wait until they see something before they predetermine what it is; before they have any idea about it. That’s the part that’s frustrating.”

De Luca, meanwhile, is still stung by the Vulture piece, which questioned the decision to allow Coogler to retain rights to Sinners after 25 years — a clause typically reserved for the Tarantinos of the industry. “They talked about this as an existential threat to the industry. I mean, it’s so ignorant and laughable,” he says. “Of course, it’s not a make-or-break thing for any studio or the industry. It was a competitive situation. Ryan himself went on the record saying he was going to get it from somebody else, and he made a pretty effective case for this movie, especially with its themes of Black ownership. This is very important and personal to him, and frankly, we’re proud to be able to give it to Ryan.”

Adby, meanwhile, was eager to push back on elements of a Puck article that questioned whether the budget granted to Gyllenhaal’s Bride, which was originally set up at Netflix before the streamer balked at the proposed budget, was proof of the reckless spending narrative that has trailed De Luca and Abdy for years.

“It’s so concerning to me, that [Puck] thinks it’s OK for every male director that’s gone from making an independent film to getting hired to direct a $150 million Marvel film, which is a budget that The Bride does not have, but yet it’s still not OK for Maggie? If it was a male director it would be a nonstory, but because it’s a female director … I’m sorry, it’s just wrong,” says Abdy.

“Maggie’s movie is punk rock. It’s fun. It’s bold. It’s got Christian Bale. It’s got Jesse Buckley. It’s got multiple ensemble casts and Mike and I believe in her wholeheartedly,” she says. “There’s been all this noise about the film, and no one has seen it yet. We just wish people would allow these filmmakers to make their films, to have them come out and let audiences see them. If they don’t work, fine. If we took a swing and we miss, that’s fair game. But I don’t know why they’re so focused on Maggie. I do feel it’s a little about her gender — I have to be honest.”

Much of the criticism directed their way stems from their willingness to spend — and spend big. De Luca, in particular, has long drawn both admiration and ire for his high-risk, high-reward bets. From Boogie Nights to Seven to Austin Powers, he helped define edgy studio filmmaking in the ’90s when he was in his 20s, in high-profile posts at New Line and MGM. He and Abdy have adopted a similar ethos during their nearly three-year tenure at Warners.

But the middle-aged version of De Luca elicits a mix of jealousy and resentment from some of his peers, many of whom see someone who, at times, hasn’t played by the same rules as everyone else. Not everyone’s buying what he’s selling today.

“He did the same thing when he was running MGM — he places big bets that don’t make financial sense. It’s not hard to win the Ryan Coogler sweepstakes when you’re paying more than anyone else,” says a top executive at another studio. “Mike made his career discovering filmmakers in the lower genre space, like Fincher and PTA. Now it just seems like he’s buying retail on Rodeo Drive — working with all the fancy people.”

And yet, others argue, that’s the whole point. “Mike and Pam know very well that with every movie they greenlight they’re betting their jobs,” says a former studio president. “For someone like Mike — one of the great mavericks of his generation — it’s better to get fired for something bold than for playing it safe. We need more of those big bets to find the next algorithm that actually works.”

For now, it looks like their own personal algorithm has stabilized with audiences endorsing both Minecraft and now Sinners, but there’s one filmgoer whose opinion matters more than anyone else’s. De Luca and Abdy publicly insist that relations with their boss, Zaslav, seem fine. But it’s clear that it hasn’t exactly been friction-free over the past few months. According to a source, it was Joker: Folie à Deux that set the stage for the tension. The studio did not test screen the film and relied on friends and family screenings. De Luca and Abdy were thrilled with the cut they saw, but Zaslav wasn’t and made it clear he had strong concerns. De Luca has privately admitted to colleagues that in this case, Zaslav ultimately got it right.

But no one can deny that De Luca and Abdy are on a roll, not even Zaslav, who called to congratulate them both on Easter Sunday. “It was a wonderful phone call, and he was very proud of the group and very happy with the result,” De Luca says.

Yet the wounds from the press still sting. “You can’t ask someone in [Zaslav’s] position to play Whack-a-Mole,” De Luca says of the nonstop rumor cycle. “He’s assured us that it was fake news and there were no changes imminent, and we took him at his word.”

As for the numbers? Sinners has to hit $170 million to break even (other sources say it is closer to $180 million), and De Luca is bullish: “I’m very confident that this film will be comfortably profitable.”

De Luca and Abdy chafe at the perception that they’re solely focused on auteur-driven originals and say it’s unfair that they’re being judged on a handful of projects that are part of a large, diversified slate. Minecraft, of course, is based on one of the most popular video games of all time. New Line Cinema, which is a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, has Final Destination, The Conjuring: Last Rights and Mortal Kombat 2 and at CinemaCon Warner Bros. Pictures Animation teased a slate of updated classics that are in the works.

And while Coogler is returning to Marvel for Black Panther 3, De Luca is already plotting his return to the Warner Bros. fold, saying, “That’s the long-term play … and I just spoke to him this morning. He will absolutely be back.”

As for his own future — the high-wire act that is modern-day movie-execing — De Luca doesn’t flinch. “I’m not saying it’s become an easier job. It has become a harder job creating films that are theater-worthy and getting people to convert to ticket buyers,” he says. “The reason that box office is down is because we’re still not making enough movies, and that goes for all the studios. So our belief — that’s shared by David — is to make more movies, and make different kinds of movies. Obviously, every movie must have the right price point.”

But, of course, Sinners and Minecraft may only be temporary reprieves. The real test is still ahead — and they have big budgets. Next up on the slate are the two films most often cited in the whispers about De Luca and Abdy’s future: Gyllenhaal’s The Bride and Anderson’s One Battle After Another. One is bold and offbeat. The other is prestige Oscar bait. Both are expensive, director-driven swings. And both will almost certainly determine whether De Luca and Abdy get to keep swinging — or whether this spring’s comeback was merely a stay of execution.

© 2025 The Hollywood Reporter.