David Zaslav, Hollywood’s anti-hero dealmaker

David Zaslav attends the HBO Max Primetime Emmy Awards Afterparty — (Image credit: David Jon/Getty Images for HBO Max)

Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at this week’s Golden Globes awards. While British and Irish luvvies were celebrating a big night for Hamnet, a coded power game was quietly in play. “We’ll start the bidding for Warner Bros at $5 – do I hear $5?” joked the ceremony host, Nikki Glaser, in her opening monologue to an audience that included Warner Bros boss David Zaslav and the Hollywood studio’s spurned suitor, David Ellison of Paramount. Seated next to Zaslav was an enigmatic-looking figure, reports the Daily Beast: none other than the reclusive billionaire Aviv “Vivi” Nevo – a big Warner stakeholder, described as having “a good deal of influence over Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood”. Nevo’s “very public placement” was a pointed reminder to Ellison, and supporters of his hostile $108billion bid, that Zaslav “has big dogs in his corner”.

Ellison’s retaliation was immediate. In an attempt to force Warner Bros back to the negotiating table, he has threatened a “proxy fight” for seats on Warner’s board – backing that up with a lawsuit demanding more disclosure on the details of Netflix’s winning $83billion bid, says The Wall Street Journal. Anyone assuming this is a done deal is misguided – there will be plenty more plot twists to come. The battle for the once-mighty Warner Bros has turned Tinsel Town upside down, says the BBC. As well as raising troubling questions about the concentration of media power and freedom of expression in Trump’s America, the impending sale – whether to Paramount as a whole, or to Netflix cut up in parts – is likely to mean more upheaval and job losses. Still, whichever side they’re rooting for, “the one thing people in Hollywood seem to agree on is this story’s villain”.

Step forward Zaslav, who took control of Warner Bros in 2022 when he merged his cable company Discovery with AT&T’s WarnerMedia, and now stands accused of running the historic film studio into the ground, while lining his own pockets. Zaslav, “whose teeth gleam a startling white and whose wardrobe skews toward Wall Street leisurewear”, makes a great Hollywood “anti-hero”, says The New Yorker. A trained lawyer with a reputation as a shrewd dealmaker, he rose to prominence in the industry as the head of Discovery – “a middle-market cable company” that makes low-cost, low-brow reality shows. For a long time, his “greatest claim to fame” was the size of his pay cheque. In 2014, when it hit $156million, he was the country’s best-paid executive. But he always wanted to be a player in Hollywood. When he pulled off his big deal in 2022, the minnow swallowed the whale.

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Born in Brooklyn in 1960, Zaslav came of age in Rockland County in New York, where his upwardly-mobile lawyer father had moved the family, says Vanity Fair. After graduating from Boston University School of Law in 1985, he started his career as an attorney in New York before joining TV network NBC in 1989, where he helped launch CNBC and MSNBC. In 2006, he became CEO of Discovery. He was once described by former Goldman Sachs boss Lloyd Blankfein as having a “golly gee aspect” to him. “He’s so enthusiastic that sometimes I get tired just talking to him.”

What will be David Zaslav's legacy?

Some give Zaslav credit for turning his company around, says the Financial Times. Others note that the shares “remained under water” until last September, when Ellison began his pursuit. The bidding war puts Zaslav in line for “a bumper pay day”, which has already sparked anger. He took “ungodly amounts of money from a company in decline”, says Stephen Galloway, a former Hollywood producer. “He will go down in Hollywood history as a major blot on the legacy of an extraordinary studio.” The sale might, at least, “give him some kind of redemption”.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors (BSME) editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.