LA SCREENINGS: Warner Bros Discovery’s David Decker talks about having difficult internal discussions about what content to retain and what to license, and why medical drama The Pitt is proving to be a hot commodity among international buyers.
Max original medical procedural The Pitt has attracted interest
Warner Bros Discovery (WBD)’s international licensing strategy has zigged and zagged as much as anyone’s over the past five years.
Under previous leader Jason Kilar, the company (known as WarnerMedia before the Discovery merger) was an early adopter of the ‘walled garden’ approach – withholding original content in order to stock its own streaming service.
It later became less rigid in its strategy, as David Zaslav took charge and enforced a more model geared toward generating more licensing revenue. Then, last year, chief financial officer Gunnar Wiedenfels said the company had left up to US$1bn in licensing revenue on the table in 2024 as it held back content in order to bolster the global rollout of its revamped streamer, Max.
There’s evidently been a lot of chopping and changing. So what does the strategy look like today?
David Decker
According to David Decker, president of global content sales, the strategy is to take an aggressively tailored approach in each market, balancing the need to support Max (soon to revert to the name HBO Max) with the need to maximise licensing revenue and make its shows available on many platforms in multiple windows.
“Strategic selling is the only way to survive,” he tells C21. “If you keep it in the walled garden, you give up money, but you also give up eyeballs and exposure to audiences. So we’re taking a thoughtful, customised approach to every project, every platform, every client for 12 months of the year.”
Of course, there is an internal push and pull when it comes to balancing those needs. Licensing teams, naturally, want as much product as possible to sell, particularly for the big titles. At the same time, the streaming teams would prefer to keep exclusive hold of the bigger titles and don’t necessarily want them licensed to market rivals.
“We talk constantly,” says Decker, referencing internal conversations with Channing Dungey, chairman and CEO of Warner Bros Television Group and US Networks; Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max content; and JB Perrette, WBD’s CEO and president of global streaming and games. “Our secret sauce is having the hard conversations internally and figuring out how to balance what’s best for the platform, customer, advertiser and the creative community.”
These conversations can sometimes be “tricky,” he concedes, as WBD, like many media companies, balances competing goals. “But [WBD president and CEO] David Zaslav wants those conversations to happen,” he adds, “and we’re trying to find a balance. Sometimes we don’t get it right, but I think we’re getting it right a lot.”
Ensuring the creators and producers on a certain show understand the rationale behind the licensing strategy is another important consideration, adds Decker. “We work with our partners more closely than ever to explain it, because you don’t want someone who spent years developing a show or movie to be surprised about where it shows up or doesn’t show up or how it performs. So that constant dialogue is a necessity.”
WBD is showcasing crime drama Task, starring Mark Ruffalo
During its LA Screenings events on Monday and Tuesday this week, WBD will showcase titles including Task, the Mark Ruffalo-led crime drama from Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby; Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms; The Seduction, a French-language reimagining of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Dangerous Liaisons; and supernatural horror series It – Welcome to Derry, which serves as a prequel to the movies It and It Chapter Two.
Medical procedural The Pitt, a Max original, is another title that has piqued buyers’ interest, according to Decker. Each of the 15 episodes focuses on one hour of a 15-hour shift at the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital. Critical and audience reaction has been resoundingly positive, and it is frequently cited as the best example to date of an SVoD original that contains many of the hallmarks of an old-school procedural drama.
“The industry was waiting for someone to crack it,” says Decker, who notes that international buyers are interested because it can work equally well on both their linear and streaming platforms. WBD itself announced last week that season one will get a linear premiere on US cablenet TNT this fall, ahead of the S2 premiere on Max.
Once written off as a genre from a bygone era, the procedural is enjoying a renaissance. But Decker is not surprised. “There was a time when everyone said multi-cam comedies were done, and then Chuck Lorre created The Big Bang Theory, and then there was a time when people said single-camera comedies were done, and then Abbott Elementary was launched,” he says. “Our view is that a genre is never over, it just needs to be reinvented.”
Game of Thrones spin-off A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
The WBD exec is coy on how The Pitt will be made available to international buyers, noting that it will “follow a localised licensing pattern” depending on the specifics of each market.
The positive reaction to The Pitt, both in terms of critical reaction and viewership, will likely initiate something of a copycat spree. “There will probably be lots of other attempts to follow it and copy it, but it is unique in that genre right now,” he says.
Even after being around the global distribution game for so many years, Decker says it is still very difficult to predict what will resonate. So is he often surprised or caught off guard by which shows strike a chord with the international buyers?
“Absolutely. You can’t predict a hit, and you often don’t know what’s going to resonate with the buyers and, ultimately, the audience,” he says. “That’s the magic of the business, and as hard as we all work on all these projects, you never know which one is going to take off.”
