What a way to prepare for an auction: Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav hosted a star-packed dinner at his Beverly Hills home Wednesday night, hours before he took a redeye flight to New York to consider the first wave of preliminary offers for the entertainment conglomerate that he has headed since 2022.
The guest list would have been impressive at any red carpet premiere: Oprah Winfrey, Lorne Michaels, Margot Robbie and Tom Ackerley, Al Pacino, Sandra Bullock, Jonah Hill, Bette Midler, Kristen Wiig, Bryan Lourd and Nancy Meyers. In total, about 20 people joined in for a casual discussion about movies and various projects in the works at the studio.
One source with direct knowledge of the evening said the mood was light-hearted and fun despite the gravity of the situation that Warner Bros. Discovery faces. The auction process, kicking off less than four years after the company went through its latest mega-merger — the union of WarnerMedia and Discovery completed in April 2022 — is sparking dread and anxiety among the rank and file at Warner Bros., HBO/HBO Max and staffs at CNN, TNT, TBS, Discovery, Food Network, HGTV and other linear cable channels brought under the WBD umbrella by the Discovery merger.
On Wednesday night, however, the dinner party conversation was said to have kept the emphasis on new projects in the hopper. There wasn’t much open conversation about the sale process. But one source said it was made clear that Zaslav and his key lieutenants expect to the process to be essentially concluded by Christmas — which struck some as ambitious.
One source said that Zaslav, as ever, was a gracious host and animated in his discussion about the industry and its future. After the last course was served, Zaslav bowed out to get himself to a plane. The WBD CEO left the crowd with the impression that his plan was to sleep during the flight, then “wake up, shower and wait for the bids to come in at noon,” per the source with direct knowledge.
The field of expected bidders for WBD that has emerged in recent weeks includes Paramount, Comcast and Netflix. The specifics of who actually submitted what Thursday are still unclear. Warner Bros. Discovery representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
