Warner Bros. Pictures chief Michael De Luca offered a master class in being a studio executive during his session Saturday at the Produced By conference hosted by the Producers Guild of America.
“The North Star [is] the relentless pursuit of new talent and fresh voices, and a way to refresh the pipeline, because if you don’t look for new voices and new talent, and you rely on what’s worked before, innovation dies within your organization,” De Luca said during a Q&A with producer Sara Murphy. “If you cut it too deep, your pipeline dries up and you don’t have enough movies.”
De Luca, who leads Warner Bros. Pictures alongside co-chair and CEO Pamela Abdy, sketched out the arc of his career as a movie-obsessed kid growing up in New York who realized his dream by landing an internship with New Line Cinema. De Luca compared the current moment of YouTube-bred filmmakers making noise at the box office to the vibe in the 1980s when the advent of home video created a financial boom that inspired the launch of a host of indie film companies including New Line Cinema.
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“In that first wave of independent companies in the ’80s, fueled by the VHS boom you had Cannon [Pictures] and Vestron and New Line and New World — that whole explosion of independent companies,” De Luca told Murphy, who produced Warner Bros.’ Oscar-winning 2025 drama “One Battle After Another” with director Paul Thomas Anderson.
The 1980s indie marketplace helped bring the film industry into a new era as the major studios struggled to find the pulse of culture. De Luca likened it to the dynamic in the late 1960s when major studios were making pricey musicals that flopped, while lower-budget titles such as “Bonnie & Clyde” and “Easy Rider” had huge impact.
“Back then, as it is now, for companies big and small, your job as a [film] executive is the identification of material, development of it, the packaging of it, the marketing of it and the distribution of it to generate revenue. That’s the job,” De Luca said at the daylong event held on the Universal Studios lot. “It doesn’t mean that under that umbrella you can’t strive for artistic excellence, have integrity in the job, give people quick answers, be as tender and merciful as you can be when you have to deliver ‘no.’ “
De Luca emphasized that the spirit of innovation and derring-do at New Line under chiefs Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne. He rose quickly and was named head of production at the young age of 27. De Luca reminisced about the first slate that bore his stamp.
“I got super-lucky in 1993 — my first slate of projects included ‘The Mask’ and ‘Dumber and Dumber.’ The second year was ‘Seven’ and a couple of other ones that worked,” he said. “We didn’t get to my problem years until later with ‘The Long Kiss Goodnight’ and ‘The Island of Dr. Moreau.’”
De Luca also stressed that his years as a producer in between studio gigs helped him understand where the key pressure points are that prevent creatives from doing their best work while at the same time minding the bottom line.
“We developed a lot of our own material from scratch. We didn’t mind hearing pitches, taking flyers on writers on producers — the kind of work that you just have to do. It’s a little needle in a haystack, but you have to develop to try to get enough projects to the starting line. The goal is for every five or six projects developed, one gets a greenlight,” he said. “If you’re sloppy with it at a studio, you get a one out of 10 ratio sometimes. Studios are very quick to cut that development line item in the budget every year, because it is a shitload of money, and if you fuck up, you could write off $20 million or $30 million at the end of the year of movies that got developed that never got made.”
De Luca avoided any direct comment on the pending merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal that has Hollywood on edge. But his remarks indicated that he has been thinking a lot about where the industry is headed and what creatives need to thrive in the era of streaming, AI and TikTok et al. He stressed that if Hollywood majors don’t explore the incredible creativity that is pouring out of social media platforms, upstart firms will jump on the opportunity. The crowd at Produced By was abuzz with the news from the box office that two low-budget horror pics, Focus Features’ “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms,’ are lighting up the multiplexes.
“Every time the studios get afraid to invest in the development of new material or take chances on new filmmakers, you get Lionsgate, you get Summit, you get A24, you get Neon, you get MRC — the list goes on and on,” De Luca said. “None of it had to happen if the studios did their jobs, and the job used to be the identification, acquisition, development, production, marketing and distribution of original movies. Every time they get afraid to take risks and just want to make sequels and IP adaptations and franchises, a whole other round of competitive companies crop up.”
De Luca noted that he is impressed with the new generation of YouTube auteurs — including Kane Parsons of “Backrooms” and Curry Barker of “Obsession” — who have such a strong connection and feedback loop going on with their social media followers.
“They hone their craft online — Kane worked on ‘Backrooms’ for five years before the eventual movie, These filmmakers are in a dialog with their audience from the word ‘go.’ Their subscribers have direct input in each iteration of these things. By the time you get to the movie, they have like a billion test screenings,” De Luca said. “We work with a lot of directors who the last thing they want to do is be sitting in a test screening in fucking Oxnard or Dallas or Phoenix and wait for that focus group to start tearing the movie to shreds. “It’s the polar opposite with this new crop of filmmakers. Not that they don’t have strong opinions or an artistic vision, but hey are making movies for their audience that have been subscribing to their channels for years. That’s been like a proving ground, so by the time the movies come out, they’re really calibrated to please that audience.”
Studios are adjusting to the new rhythms of marketing and promotion as dictated by the pace of social media.
“One Battle After Another” star Chase Infiniti got her co-star Leonardo DiCaprio to do TikTok to promote the film. “I don’t think any of us could have predicted, but you just can’t say no Chase. She’s just the best at getting getting what she wants done done,” De Luca said.
Of course, he acknowledged that there are pros and cons in a time when every fan has a megaphone at the ready to blast their opinion.
“When it works for you, it’s a force amplifier,” De Luca said. He credited none other than Tom Cruise for sparking the “Barbenheimer” summer in 2023 after Cruise posted a picture of himself buying tickets for Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” and Universal’s “Oppenheimer” to show his support for moviegoing overall.
“That’s something that couldn’t have happened 10 years ago. ‘Barbenheimer’ could not have happened without the internet. So it’s been a wonderful tool,” De Luca said. “Now the downside is when you have something that the digital crowd mobilizes again, because it’s global, it’s not like you can just be able to steal a weekend because the news wasn’t out that you’d shit the bed until Sunday. But now it’s like Friday night and your D.O.A. on Saturday morning. But it’s worth the trade off for when you have something that people want to see.”
Among other subjects, De Luca shared his view that the concept of “IP” which has taken root over the past decade is misunderstood. In his mind, “IP” is rooted not in pre-existing material or long-established characters but rather than human talent that creates the material.
“I actually think IP is talent,” he said. “I don’t think Batman is IP. I think the artists and writers over the decades that did that comic book are the IP.”
De Luca recalled having a meeting at Warner Bros. Pictures during his producing days when he was told the studio would no longer invest in new material, only sequels, Harry Potter material and DC Studios titles. That approach and the push into streaming-first exhibition during the pandemic was debilitating to the once-proud studio. It alienated the most respected filmmaker of his generation, Christopher Nolan, who worked with Warner Bros. for years but has made his last two movies at Universal.
“It cost the studio Chris Nolan,” he said. “It’s just such a competitive environment, and filmmakers like that are so rare. You just can’t fumble these balls. You have to give people the best possible experience.”
Cynthia Littleton
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