Warner Bros

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AN 12 25

On Sunday, President Donald Trump declared that he will “be involved” in the federal government’s decision on whether to allow the streaming service Netflix to buy mass media and entertainment conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. On Monday, Paramount Skydance, another mass media and entertainment conglomerate, announced a hostile takeover bid for WBD — with news soon following that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s private equity firm is part of the Paramount offer.

“Paramount is telling WBD shareholders that it has a smoother path to regulatory approval than does Netflix, and Kushner’s involvement only strengthens that case,” Axios reported. “Paramount is led by David Ellison, whose billionaire father Larry is a major supporter of President Trump.”

Axios added that Kushner’s firm, Affinity Partners, “was not mentioned in Paramount’s press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid, nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar.”

Fortune reported that “Affinity and the other outside financing partners have agreed to forgo any governance rights, which Paramount said means the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States would have no jurisdiction over the transaction.”

But Axios’ Sarah Fischer wrote on social media: “Ask yourself, why would anyone want to put money into an investment of this caliber and have no governance rights or board seats?”

“Essentially,” she added, “people want to have control/access/political power behind the scenes.”

“Reality is,” Fischer explained, this hostile takeover is a good explanation “of how capitalism/democracy can be exploited for political gain,” with “Paramount essentially betting our open system incentivizes shareholders to take [the] best financial deal even if it means giving soft power” to three sovereign wealth funds, the President, and his son-in-law.

Critics are blasting Kushner’s and Trump’s involvement.

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) remarked, “Donald Trump said he’ll ‘be involved in’ deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros. Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals? It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts.”

Award-winning journalist Sophia A. Nelson, responding to trump’s remarks, observed: “This is ridiculous. Corrupt. And NOT what a President gets involved in.”

Professor, investor, and marketing executive Adam Cochran wrote: “Trump is talking about him personally being involved in deciding the fate of the Netflix-Warner Brothers deal, and how it’s ‘bad.’ Meanwhile his son-in-law is financing the competing offer. There has truly never been a more corrupt administration in US history!”

Alexander Vindman, former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “F– NO to another corrupt Trump deal. Nepobaby, Jared’s, involvement would deliver CNN to MAGA.”

NewsNation’s Kurt Bardella, a communications advisor and media relations consultant, asked: “Alexa, what is a ‘conflict-of-interest’?”

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Trump aides suggest Warner Bros. give Don Jr. a hunting show to improve White House ties

an 4 25

https://www.mediamatters.org/cnn/outgoing-cnn-ceo-chris-licht-did-exactly-what-was-expected-him

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Ousted CNN chief executive Chris Licht did exactly what his bosses wanted, ideologically repositioning the network in hopes of attracting Republican viewers. Now the network’s ratings are in the toilet, its reputation is damaged, and Licht is out after a devastating profile in The Atlantic — but there’s little reason to expect the situation to change.

Licht’s run at CNN ended on Wednesday after only 13 months. David Zaslav, the chief executive of CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, reportedly told staff at a meeting announcing the change that Licht “poured his heart and soul into this job” but that ultimately “for a number of reasons things didn’t work out.” Media accounts of Licht’s dismissal invariably point to the impact of a brutal Atlantic profile published on Friday, which triggered a newsroom revolt.

In that Atlantic profile, staff writer Tim Alberta detailed “the meltdown at CNN” under Licht, who comes across as an underprepared and ineffectual network president who is trying to undertake a doomed mission he does not seem to fully understand. Alberta writes:

When he took the helm of CNN, in May 2022, Licht had promised a reset with Republican voters—and with their leader. He had swaggered into the job, telling his employees that the network had lost its way under former President Jeff Zucker, that their hostile approach to Trump had alienated a broader viewership that craved sober, fact-driven coverage. These assertions thrust Licht into a two-front war: fighting to win back Republicans who had written off the network while also fighting to win over his own journalists, many of whom believed that their new boss was scapegoating them to appease his new boss, David Zaslav, who’d hired Licht with a decree to move CNN toward the ideological center.

Zaslav’sdesire to remake CNN by moving it toward the ideological right is shared by John Malone, a major Republican donor and Warner Bros. Discovery boardmember who has said he would like the network to be more like Fox News.

Their shared approach, as implemented by Licht, damaged CNN’s reputation by giving the right what it wanted. Licht fired harsh critics of former President Donald Trump, cozied up to Republican leaders, and made clear that he wanted a return to “both sides” journalism.

His work culminated with last month’s live town hall with Trump, who steamrolled CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins with lies and called her a “nasty person” on-air, as the live audience of his supporters cheered. The event drew devastating reviews from journalists inside CNN and out — but Licht staunchly defended it to his staff, and indeed, it seemed entirely in keeping with Zaslav’s vision for the network.

This version of CNN isn’t just journalistically indefensible — it’s also failed to attract an audience. In theory, catering to Republicans was supposed to lure viewers away from more right-wing outlets. In reality, there isn’t an audience for Fox Light: CNN’s viewership withered under Licht as viewers switched to MSNBC or away from cable news altogether. Zaslav and Malone don’t seem to care — they just want CNN to meet their ideological demands.

And that’s why Licht’s departure won’t end CNN’s problems. His successor may be canny enough not to put their office on a separate floor from CNN’s journalists, or to treat a reporter writing a profile like a personal therapist. But that person will likely get the same demands from Zaslav and Malone to move the network toward the right and away from the truth, and try to follow them.

wiki

Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures, formerly known as Warner Bros. Studios, commonly referred to as Warner Bros. (spelledWarner Brothers during the company's early years), Warners, or simply WB—is an American producer of film, television, and music entertainment.

One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank, California and New York. Warner Bros. has several subsidiary companies, including Warner Bros. Studios, Warner Bros. Pictures, Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment, Warner Bros. Television, Warner Bros. Animation, Warner Home Video,New Line Cinema, TheWB.com, and DC Entertainment. Warner owns half of The CW Television Network.

Warner Bros. is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).^[2]

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History[edit]

1903–25: Founding[edit]

The corporate name honors the four founding Warner brothers (born Wonskolaser [pron. VON Sko La' Ser] or Wonsal)^[3][4]—Harry (born Hirsz), Albert (born Aaron), Sam(born Szmul), and Jack (Itzhak or to some sources Jacob). Harry, Albert, Sam and their parents emigrated to North America from the part of Poland that had been subjugated to the Russian Empire following the eighteenth-century partitions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth near present-day Ostrołęka, Poland. Jack, the youngest, was born in London, Ontario. The three elder brothers began in the movie theatre business, having acquired a movie projector with which they showed films in the mining towns of Pennsylvania and Ohio. In the beginning,^[5] Sam and Albert Warner invested $150 to present Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery. They opened their first theater, the Cascade, in New Castle, Pennsylvania in 1903. (The site of the Cascade later became the Cascade Center, a shopping, dining and entertainment complex honoring its Warner Bros. heritage, though in late 2010 all of the businesses have closed and the complex is currently for sale.)^[6] When this original theatre building in New Castle was in danger of being demolished, the modern Warner Bros. called the current building owners, and arranged an agreement in hopes of saving it. The owners noted that they were taking phone calls from all over the country in reference to the historical significance of the humble building that many thought should be saved for historical reasons.^[7]

In 1904, the Warners founded the Pittsburgh-based Duquesne Amusement & Supply Company,^[6] to distribute films. In 1912, Harry Warner hired an auditor named Paul Ashley Chase. By the time of World War I they had begun producing films, and in 1918 the brothers opened the Warner Bros. studio on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Sam and Jack Warner produced the pictures, while Harry and Albert Warner and their auditor and now controller Chase handled finance and distribution in New York City. It was during World War I and their first nationally syndicated film was My Four Years in Germany based on a popular book by former American Ambassador James W. Gerard. On April 4, 1923, with help from a loan given to Harry Warner by his banker Motley Flint,^[HBTN ^1] they formally incorporated as Warner Brothers Pictures, Incorporated. However, as late as the 1960s, Warner Bros. claimed 1905 as its founding date.^[8]

Warner Bros. – First National Studios, Burbank, c. 1928.

The first important deal for the company was the acquisition of the rights to Avery Hopwood's 1919 Broadway play, The Gold Diggers, from theatrical impresario David Belasco. However, what really put Warner Bros. on the Hollywood map was a dog, Rin Tin Tin,^[HBTN ^2] brought from France after World War I by an American soldier.^[HBTN ^3] Rin Tin Tin debuted in the feature Where the North Begins. The movie was so successful that Jack Warner agreed to sign the dog to star in more films for $1,000 per week.^[HBTN ^2] Rin Tin Tin became the top star at the studio.^[HBTN ^2] Jack Warner nicknamed him "The Mortgage Lifter"^[HBTN ^2] and the success boosted Darryl F. Zanuck's career.^[HBTN ^4] Zanuck eventually became a top producer for the studio^[HBTN ^5] and between 1928 and 1933 served as Jack Warner's right-hand man and executive producer, with responsibilities including the day-to-day production of films.^[9] More success came after Ernst Lubitsch was hired as head director;^[HBTN ^4] Harry Rapf left the studio and accepted an offer to work at MGM.^[cph ^1] Lubitsch's film The Marriage Circle was the studio's most successful film of 1924, and was on The New York Times best list for the year.^[HBTN ^4]

Despite the success of Rin Tin Tin and Lubitsch, Warners was still unable to achieve star power.^[HBTN ^6] As a result, Sam and Jack decided to offer Broadway actor John Barrymore the lead role in Beau Brummel.^[HBTN ^6] The film was so successful that Harry Warner agreed to sign Barrymore to a generous long-term contract;^[HBTN ^7] like The Marriage Circle, Beau Brummell was named one of the ten best films of the year by The New York Times.^[HBTN ^7] By the end of 1924, Warner Bros. was arguably the most successful independent studio in Hollywood,^[HBTN ^7] but it still competed with "The Big Three" Studios (First National, Paramount Pictures, and MGM).^[10] As a result, Harry Warner – while speaking at a convention of 1,500 independent exhibitors in Milwaukee, Wisconsin – was able to convince the filmmakers to spend $500,000 in newspaper advertising,^[HBTN ^8] and Harry saw this as an opportunity to finally be able to establish theaters in big cities like New York and Los Angeles.^[HBTN ^8]

As the studio prospered, it gained backing from Wall Street, and in 1924 Goldman Sachs arranged a major loan. With this new money, the Warners bought the pioneer Vitagraph Company which had a nation-wide distribution system.^[HBTN ^8] In 1925, Warners also experimented in radio, establishing a successful radio station, KFWB, in Los Angeles.^[HBTN ^9]

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World War II[edit]

According to Jack Warner in his autobiography, prior to the United States entering World War II, the head of Warner Bros. sales in Germany, Philip Kauffman, was murdered by the Nazis in Berlin in 1936.^[29][30][31]Harry Warner produced the successful anti-German film The Life of Emile Zola (1937).^[HBTN ^37] After that, Harry supervised the production of several more anti-German films, including Confessions of a Nazi Spy(1939),^[HBTN ^38] The Sea Hawk (1940), which made King Phillip II an equivalent of Hitler,^[HBTN ^39] Sergeant York,^[HBTN ^40] and You're In The Army Now (1941).^[HBTN ^40] After the United States officially entered World War II, Harry Warner decided to focus on producing war films.^[HBTN ^41] Also, one-fourth of the studio's employees, including Jack Warner and his son Jack Jr., were drafted or enlisted.^[HBTN ^41]

Warners cut its film production in half during the war, eliminating its B Pictures unit in 1941. Bryan Foy was quickly snapped up by Twentieth Century Fox.^[32]Among the films the studio made during the war were Casablanca, Now, Voyager, Yankee Doodle Dandy (all 1942), This Is the Army, and Mission to Moscow (both 1943);^[HBTN ^42] the latter became controversial a few years afterwards. At the premieres of Yankee Doodle Dandy (in Los Angeles, New York, and London), audiences purchased $15.6 million in war bonds for the governments of England and the United States. By the middle of 1943, however, it became clear audiences were tired of war films. Despite the growing pressure to abandon production of war films, Warner continued to produce them, losing money in the process. Eventually, in honor of the studio's contributions to the war cause, the United States Government named a Liberty ship after the brothers' father, Benjamin Warner, and Harry Warner was given the honor of christening the ship. By the time the war ended, $20 million in war bonds were purchased through the studio, the Red Cross collected 5,200 pints of plasma from studio employees,^[HBTN ^42] and 763 of the studio's employees served in the armed forces, including Harry Warner's son-in-law Milton Sperling and Jack's son Jack Warner, Jr. Following a dispute over ownership of Casablanca's Oscar for Best Picture, head producer Hal B. Wallis broke with Warner and resigned. After Casablanca made Bogart one of the studio's top stars, Bogart found his relationship with Jack Warner deteriorating.^[cph ^36] In 1943, Olivia de Haviland (whom Warner was now loaning to different companies) sued Warner for breach of contract.^[cph ^47]

De Haviland had refused to accept an offer to portray famed abolitionist Elizabeth Blackwell in an upcoming film for Columbia Pictures.^[cph ^47] Warner responded by sending 150 telegrams to different film production companies, warning them not to hire her for any role.^[cph ^47] Afterwards, de Haviland discovered employment contracts in the United States could only serve a duration of seven years; de Haviland had been under contract with the studio since 1935.^[cph ^48] The court ruled in de Haviland's favor^[cph ^47] and she left the studio.^[cph ^47] Through de Haviland's victory, many of the studio's longtime actors were now freed from their contracts,^[cph ^47] and Harry Warner decided to terminate the studio's suspension policy.^[cph ^49]

The same year, Jack Warner also signed newly released MGM actress Joan Crawford, a former top star who found her career fading.^[cph ^50] Crawford's first role with the studio was 1944's Hollywood Canteen.^[cph ^51]Her first starring role at the studio, in the title role as Mildred Pierce (1945), revived her career^[cph ^51] and earned her an Oscar for Best Actress.^[cph ^52]

Whether you think of Warner Bros. as the studio that gave you talking pictures, Bugs Bunny, Bogart, or Batman, you have to acknowledge the studio's place at the forefront of Hollywood history. Indeed, it'll be hard to avoid acknowledging it this year, as the studio will be spending 2013 celebrating its 90th birthday.

The celebration kicks off with the release of two massive boxed sets of 50-plus discs each, both entitled the "Best of Warner Bros." -- a 100-film set of DVDs and a 50-film set of Blu-rays. Both sets encompass the studio's milestones of the entire sound film era, which Warners itself kicked off in 1927 with the release of "The Jazz Singer." (The sets go all the way up to the 2010 classic-to-be "Inception.")

As familiar as these movies are, there's still plenty you may not know about the legendary movie studio, from who the actual Warner Brothers were, to the stars the studio minted, to its technical innovations, dramatic downturns, and recent achievements. Read on for a list of little-known facts about the Hollywood institution. (Many of these were gleaned from "Hollywood Be Thy Name," the 1999 biography of the brothers written by Harry Warner's granddaughter, Cass Warner Sperling, and Cork Millner.)

1. Yes, Warner Bros. has a motto, and no, it's not, "That's All, Folks!" In fact, it's "Educate, Entertain, and Enlighten."

2. How many Warner Brothers were there? Initially, there were 12 siblings, four of whom died in childhood. The founders of the studio were four of the surviving siblings: Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack.

3. The studio dates its founding to its incorporation on April 4, 1923, but the Warners were in the movie business long before that. In the first years of the 20th century, the family (then based in Youngstown, Ohio) bought a film projector and used it in to show movies in a tent that they toured throughout Ohio and Pennsylvania before opening their first stand-alone theater in 1906. In 1907, they moved into film distribution.

4. The Warner Brothers started to produce their own movies in 1910. By 1918, they had built their first studio in Los Angeles, in Culver City. Two years later, they moved to a site in Hollywood, on Sunset Blvd., in what is today the Sunset Bronson Studios.

5. The studio's first major star was a German shepherd, Rin Tin Tin. The dog appeared in 27 movies and was Warners' biggest asset of the silent era. According to legend, he even received the most votes for Best Actor during the first Academy Awards, but the Academy, seeking credibility, gave the prize to the human male with the most votes, Emil Jannings.

6. "The Jazz Singer" is considered the first major talking picture, but it was not the first sound film. In the mid-'20s, Warners introduced Vitaphone, a system for accompanying film with sound from engraved discs, that was used for talking short films and for musical sequences in the exhibition of such Warners features as John Barrymore's 1926 hit "Don Juan."

7. Still, "The Jazz Singer" was the first successful feature-length film featuring spoken dialogue. Sam Warner, the brother who was the strongest supporter of the Vitaphone technology, died at 40 of complications from pneumonia on the eve of the film's 1927 premiere. The Al Jolson vehicle was a smash, putting Warners on the map as a major studio and facilitating its move to the massive studio lot in Burbank that Warners occupies to this day. More important, "The Jazz Singer" ushered in the transition from silent movies to sound films throughout the world within the next couple of years.

8. In the 1930s, Warners was best known for its gangster movies. "Little Caesar," the 1930 melodrama about a mobster's violent rise and fall, set the template for virtually all gangster dramas to come. The crime dramas that followed throughout the decade -- including "Public Enemy," "I Am A Fugitive From a Chain Gang," "Angels With Dirty Faces," and "The Roaring Twenties" -- made stars out of such Warner contract players as Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney, Paul Muni, and Humphrey Bogart.

9. Other stars who made their names as Warner contract players in those days included Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, George Raft, and Ronald Reagan.

10. With the coming of World War II, the studio began to specialize in war dramas supporting the Allied effort. The archetypal movie of the period was 1942's "Casablanca." The Humphrey Bogart classic may be the most beloved movie in the studio's history; to this day, the film's theme song, "As Time Goes By," can be heard while the "WB" shiield logo appears at the beginning of every Warner Bros. release.

11. The studio got its first cartoon star with Porky Pig in the mid-1930s, though he was soon supplanted by Bugs Bunny (who debuted in 1940) as the Warners' mascot. Despite the production of hundreds of legendary shorts whose subversive, irreverent humor has kept them fresh to this day, Jack Warner treated the cartoon division with indifference bordering on contempt. He supposedly knew so little about his studio's own product that he mistakenly believed Mickey Mouse was one of his properties. In the 1950s, he sold much of the Warners' cartoon library for a mere $3,000 per short, thus depriving the studio of untold millions in future revenues.

12. In 1950, Warners was facing the rise of television and the aftermath of the Supreme Court's Paramount decision, which forced the Hollywood studios to sell off their theater chains. Facing an uncertain future, Jack Warner sold off most of the studio's pre-1950 library of classic films for just $21 million.

13. James Dean made only three movies, all of them for Warners: "East of Eden," "Rebel WIthout a Cause," and "Giant."

14. Jack Warner had been the effective head of the studio since the 1920s, often clashing with his brothers. In the 1950s, the brothers agreed to sell their interest in the studio, but Jack secretly bought his brothers' shares through a consortium. Soon, he was the sole head of the studio. His brothers never forgave him, and Harry never spoke to him again. Harry died soon after in 1958; Jack did not attend his funeral.

15. Over the years, Warners was involved in several landmark censorship battles. Such gritty early 1930s films as "Baby Face" (in which Barbara Stanwyck sleeps her way to the top of the corporate ladder) were so scandalous that they led to the 1934 institution of the Production Code that kept movies sanitized for the next 35 years. In 1951, the studio wrangled with the Code administrators over the adults-only content of "A Streetcar Named Desire" until finally achieving some compromises that permitted the release of the landmark film. In 1966, the studio flouted the code with "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" and was rewarded with several Oscars and box officesuccess. That was the victory that ultimately forced the code to fold forever, to be replaced in 1968 by the movie content ratings system we have today.

16. Jack Warner stepped back from his studio-chief duties after the 1967 flop "Camelot." He'd been running the studio he co-founded longer than any of the other moguls of his generation, including Harry Cohn (Columbia) and Louis B. Mayer (MGM), and his retirement was considered the end of an era.

17. Warners created the blueprint for the modern-day superhero movie with 1978's "Superman" (with Christopher Reeve) and 1989's "Batman" (with Michael Keaton), both based on caped-hero titles published by DC Comics, which was a division of Warner Bros.

18. For the last three decades of his career, Stanley Kubrick worked exclusively with Warner Bros. as his distributor, in a partnership that resulted in such classic films as "A Clockwork Orange," "The Shining," and "Full Metal Jacket."

19. Warners boasts nine Best Picture Oscar winners, from "The Life of Emile Zola" (1937) to "The Departed" (2006).

20. Warners got most of its classic library of features and cartoons back in 1996 when it purchased Ted Turner's Turner Broadcasting. The Turner collection included the MGM/United Artists library and the RKO library, which seems to be the reason why the new Best of Warner Bros. DVD and Blu-ray collections include such films as "The Wizard of Oz," "Gone With the Wind," "Citizen Kane," "An American in Paris," and "Singin' in the Rain," which were not Warner Bros. productions.

21. Warners ushered in the modern-style documentary wave with 1989's "Roger & Me," which launched Michael Moore's directing career.

22. In 2009, Warners became the first studio to gross more than $2 billion in North America in a calendar year.

23. Warners' biggest grossing hit ever: 2011's "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2," with a worldwide gross of $1.3 billion. Its biggest domestic hit: 2008's "The Dark Knight," which earned $533 million in North America.

24. Virtually every movie Clint Eastwood has directed or starred in for the past 45 years has been for Warner Bros., a partnership that has included about 40 films.

25. To the extent that the studio is known for anything these days, it's for greenlighting mega-franchises: the Harry Potter movies, the Matrix trilogy, Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, the "Lord of the Rings" and "Hobbit" trilogies (made by Warners' indie division New Line Pictures), the "Sherlock Holmes" movies, the "Hangover" comedies, and the Superman movies (including this year's upcoming "The Man of Steel").

Warner Bros

Contents

History[edit]

1903–25: Founding[edit]

World War II[edit]