Does David Zaslav Know What’s In The WB Catalog? Seems Like He Doesn’t

Warner Bros. Discovery hosted one of its earnings calls today, and it was about as high energy and interesting as these earnings call’s usually are. This one, in particular, was going to be a bit more interesting, considering all of the blood in the water regarding Warner Bros. and some of the better decisions they have made over the last couple of years. However, when emphasizing the importance of franchises, President and CEO David Zaslav revealed that he either couldn’t do basic math, thinks certain movies don’t count as being part of certain franchises, or doesn’t know what is in the Warner Bros. catalog. We aren’t sure which option is the funnier of the three, but they are all extremely amusing.

“We’re going to focus on franchises. We haven’t had a Superman movie in 13 years. We haven’t done a Harry Potter in 15 years. The DC movies and the Harry Potter movies provided a lot of the profits for Warner Bros. … over the past 25 years,” Zaslav stated during the call. So let’s look at what exactly happened here.

David Zaslav: You Got A D On The Math Test; See Me After Class

So, one of the options here is that Zaslav is very bad at math. When he said we haven’t had a Harry Potter movie in fifteen years, the first instinct would be to say, “what about the Fantastic Beasts movies?” That would be an acceptable response and one that would make sense. However, let’s take this much more literally and say that Zaslav is only talking about movies that have the word ‘Harry Potter’ in the title. Does the math work if that is the case? No, it does not, because Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 came out on July 15, 2011. That was a little over eleven years ago, so the math isn’t adding up, David. Fifteen years ago would be 2007, and that would be Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, but three more movies came out after that one, and it was the first time someone split a book into two parts. That was a trend that other YA adaptations would use whether it was needed or not. So it has not been fifteen years since we have seen a Harry Potter movie, regardless of whether or not you want to count the Fantastic Beasts movies.

Let’s go over to Superman and Zaslav, saying that it has been thirteen years since we have had a Superman movie. The loud noise you heard on the internet was a lot of fanboys getting angry because that implies that Man of Steel, directed by Zack Snyder, doesn’t count as a Superman movie. That movie was released on June 13, 2013. Once again, if we are doing the math, that is just over nine years ago. So that math isn’t adding up. Maybe he only counts the Superman Returns movie because it has the words “Superman” in the title, but the math isn’t adding up there, either. That movie was released in 2006, which was sixteen years ago.

So, either Zaslav failed elementary school math and needs to learn how to subtract again, or the President and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery has no idea what is actually in the catalog he oversees right now. If nothing else, he couldn’t be bothered to actually look at the release dates of the last entries in the franchises he was going to highlight in his statements during the call. Then again, we would like to forget that the Fantastic Beasts movies also happened, so maybe we are on the same page as him.