If you have the pleasure of being unaware of David Zaslav then please allow me to ruin your day. He is the current President and CEO of Warner Brothers Discovery. Since he took that position he’s made decisions such as changing the name of HBO Max to Max, A name so stupid that even while promoting his show for the platform Conan O’Brien had to make fun of how stupid it is, he also trashed nearly films Batgirl, Scoob! Holiday Haunt and Coyote vs. Acme so he could get a tax break. That’s right, the head of a movie studio decided that movies are something that shouldn't be released. What a great movie studio head.
This is a man who once referred to filmmakers as “content creators”. I’m surprised Martin Scorsese didn’t have him whacked right then and there. He didn’t even watch Coyote vs. Acme before deciding that it would be deleted forever for a tax write off and that’s in spite of the fact that it had very positive test screenings. Everyone who watched that film said it was fantastic, and it was based on not just a popular IP but the IP that Warner Brothers was built on, the Looney Tunes. If he would just kill that movie, there’s nothing he wouldn’t.
You might be asking, what has this creamless Twinkie of a man done now to draw my renewed ire? Well, nothing yet. But I saw Bad Boys: Ride or Die earlier this week and it was great. Best in the franchise and a big part of that was the direction. It was dynamic and fun, drone shots were swopping into the action, and there were first-person shots like a video game. The camera didn’t just capture the action it moved with it, it was a part of it. The directors of the film Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah (who also directed Bad Boys For Life) directed Batgirl, a movie that David Zaslav wants us to think was unwatchable and unreleaseable. That’s been running through my mind since I came out of the theater.
There is simply no way that the same men who made Bad Boys: Ride or Die made a Batgirl movie that was supposedly so bad it had to be thrown into the empty abyss that Zaslav crawled out of in the first place. So, since I’ve seen the movie instead of thinking about how great it was and how it alone should give Will Smith a free pass to slap whoever he damn well pleases, all I’ve thought about is David Zaslav and how he is a cancer upon the film industry.
Saying I hope he falls down a well is an understatement. It’s frankly the nicest thing I could think of. I hope much worse things befall him. He is the head of a movie studio but he hates movies and holds those who make them in contempt. He wants content and quick profits, he doesn't want films. I don’t think he’s ever even watched a movie and if he has it was probably The Gray Man. All of Hollywood is now run by MBAs who don’t know anything about movies and in a sea of evil idiots, David Zaslav is the evilest and most idiotic. He’s corporate greed in human form. Even Ronald Regan would have hated him because at least ol’ Ronnie liked movies.
Warner Brothers was once a titan in the film industry. One of the most respected film studios and now it’s a skidmark. Every Barbie or Dune that they release will forever be known as something that simply escaped Zaslav’s death gaze like Frodo and Samwise avoiding the Eye of Sauron. For every young talented filmmaker the thought will be “hope they don’t work with Warner Brothers”, every project announced by WB will now have an asterisk next to it. *May never get released. And now whenever I watch Bad Boys: Ride or Die, all I’ll think about is how good Batgirl may have been but no one will ever know because David Zaslav is the gonorrhea of the film industry.
Go see Bad Boys: Ride or Die in theaters now.