Hot off a wildly successful six-month box office winning streak, Warner Bros. has renewed the contracts of the heads of its motion picture group, Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy.
“Mike & Pam’s unwavering leadership and commitment to this business has been critical to our success this year, with countless box office records broken across Warner Bros. Pictures and New Line Cinema, where Jesse Ehrman, Richard Brenner and their teams have been flawless,” Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said in a statement.
In 2025, Warner Bros. became the first studio in history to release seven consecutive films with domestic opening weekends of more than $40 million. Led by Legendary’s “A Minecraft Movie,” DC’s “Superman” and Apple’s “F1,” combined with the wild success of horror offerings like “Sinners” and “Weapons,” Warner has earned an annual global gross of more than $4 billion.
But like the rest of Hollywood, Warner Bros. first had to navigate a very difficult first quarter of the year filled with misfires. Despite positive reception, the New Line horror film “Companion” failed to gain a foothold, as did Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17,” which had been greenlit prior to De Luca and Abdy’s arrival at the studio.
Heading into April, rumors swirled around De Luca and Abdy’s future at Warner Bros. just as they were set to roll out a key part of their vision for the studio: investing big budgets into original films from acclaimed filmmakers. First of this bunch was “Sinners,” the first original film in 12 years from “Black Panther” director Ryan Coogler who, in a special deal, would receive the rights to the film in 2050.
While other studios reportedly balked at this special condition Coogler made for a film project that was particularly personal to him, De Luca and Abdy agreed. The result was a wildly acclaimed horror film that became the first since “Aliens” to earn an A on CinemaScore as well as the highest grossing original live-action film since “Inception” in the United States with $278.5 million domestic — a jaw-dropping 5.8x multiple from its $48 million opening weekend — and $366 million worldwide.
Two weeks before “Sinners,” Warner also established a new tentpole franchise with “A Minecraft Movie.” Driven by “chicken jockey” memes and rowdy screenings, it earned the year’s highest opening with $162.7 million and grossed $957 million worldwide.
The summer brought more success with “Final Destination: Bloodlines,” a revival of the 2000s horror series that became the highest grossing in franchise history. “Superman” and “F1” both cleared $600 million worldwide, “Weapons” established director Zach Cregger as a name in the horror space, and “The Conjuring: Last Rites” also set a franchise record for the decade-plus New Line occult series.
More to come…
