Warner Bros. Chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy Took Big Risks and Made Great Movies. Their Exit Is a Bad Thing for Cinema

The Pam and Mike era is over. Their sensibility led to big hits and massive flops and was not in sync with new Skydance boss David Ellison.

It was going to be a long weekend for Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca, the Co-Chairs and CEOs of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group. They rode the waves over the past three years. Their ethos was not to lose faith over bad box office. After a weak 2024 (see George Miller’s “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” and Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie à Deux“) threatened their tenure, 2025 turned into a boffo $4-billion global year (see Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” and Zach Cregger’s “Weapons”) which then yielded a pitiless 2026 with no pictures grossing over $100 million at the domestic box office. Denis Villeneuve’s likely blockbuster “Dune: Part 3” arrives too late (December 18) to save them.

Their risky bet on A.G. Iñárritu’s ambitious art film “Digger” likely dug their grave, as new Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison has no intention of making costly art films that may or may not make their money back. That “official” $125 million budget was the greenlight figure, signed off by WB boss David Zaslav: the movie went way over that, with some insiders pegging the true cost at $160 million or higher. Cruise showed up late, for one thing, delayed by his last “Mission” movie.

Look at Ellison’s track record as a movie producer: “Mission: Impossible,” “Star Trek,” and Terminator” movies. That’s his range, as Tom Cruise’s “Days of Thunder” sequel ramps up. He would not have greenlit, for example, Paul Thomas Anderson’s Oscar-winning “One Battle After Another,” which ultimately lost money for Warner Bros., while adding long-term value to its library.

On Thursday, Abdy and De Luca were waiting to learn their fate, which was to be revealed no later than closing day, Tuesday, October 6. By Friday they were out, as Ellison announced the name of the company ingesting the newly combined Warner Bros. and Paramount studios: Skydance, his old company name. “Paramount and Warner Bros. shaped over a century of culture,” Ellison wrote. “By combining them, we aren’t rewriting history — we’re equipping these iconic studios with a more powerful engine. Together, we are Skydance: a creative-first home for bold, quality storytelling.”

It makes sense that Ellison would let go of a team of creative storytellers who were not in sync with his vision. Abdy and De Luca represent a filmmaking approach that isn’t solely defined by sequels and CGI. They believe that while anyone can read a spreadsheet, people who make movies should be hired for their taste.

I’ve known De Luca since he was a 27-year-old hotshot president at New Line Productions, empowered by his maverick boss Bob Shaye to take big swings like “Final Destination,” “Austin Powers,” and “Magnolia.” As a producer, he backed long shots like “Moneyball,” “Captain Phillips,” and “50 Shades of Grey.” This is the guy who wishes he had made “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — not because it was profitable, or won Oscars, but because he thinks it’s a perfect movie.

Hollywood also respects Abdy, his former MGM co-chief (“Queen & Slim,” “Garden State,” “47 Ronin” are among her credits), who is a shrewd studio player. She’s praised for her strong sense of story, as well as her grasp of power politics. Many are rooting for them — probably some of the same people who predicted their demise or declared that their “Sinners” deal, which not only granted final cut and first-dollar gross but where rights revert to Coogler in 25 years, would destroy the business. They will turn up with a studio production deal at Sony or Universal, is my guess. (By the way, that rumored meeting between Abdy and Netflix chief Ted Sarandos never happened.) Ultimately, they are theatrical animals.

But overhauling a studio is an expensive and risky move. For one thing, Skydance will have to pay out both executives’ four-year contracts. And the new motion picture bosses, Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg, who now serve as the co-chairs of Paramount Pictures, will have to fulfill the demands of the Consent Decree: an initial 30 films a year for two years from the two studios and 32 for the three years after that. (After a lunch with Ellison’s new co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, speculation is rampant that former Fox and Disney executive Peter Rice could be in the mix for a new gig at the massive new conglomerate.) Greenstein and Goldberg are both capable execs, though they lack De Luca and Abdy’s track record and relationships with auteurs. That may not matter. Greenstein was friends with Ellison even before he left Sony for Paramount (they bonded over a shared love of aviation) and Goldberg worked with him at Skydance before he started vacuuming up legacy studios.

It will be sad for Abdy and De Luca to not be able to supervise the films they had developed going forward. The 2027 slate looks robust: “Godzilla King: Supernova,” Bradley Cooper’s “To Catch a Thief”-inspired “Oceans 11” prequel, “Minecraft Squared,” Keanu Reeves in shark thriller “Shiver,” Taylor Sheridan-penned drug crime thriller “F.A.S.T.,” starring Brandon Sklenar and Sam Claflin, and Ian McKellen as Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum.” And 2028 returns Robert Pattinson as The Batman, in “Part II,” plus Chris Columbus’s “Gremlins 3” with Jim Henson puppets, a Baz Luhrmann original, and two Zach Cregger joints: “The Flood,” starring Jennifer Lawrence, which he will direct, and “Weapons” spin-off “Gladys,” starring Oscar-winner Amy Madigan, which has not yet named a director.

“You cannot do the job like you’re afraid to get fired,” De Luca told Franklin Leonard on a podcast. “Because if you act like that, innovation dies. You’re just doing the job to protect yourself and you end up making the same movie over and over again, and the consumer moves on.”

Now that De Luca and Abdy are moving on, it may be the consumer who loses out.