Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are out at Warner Bros, an insider tells The Hollywood Reporter.
The news of film chiefs’ imminent exit comes as Paramount Skydance prepares for its landmark $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. The combined David Ellison-owned super studio is now called, simply, Skydance, with the merger expected to be finalized on Oct. 6.
Paramount film heads Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein are expected to oversee both movie studios. Abdy and De Luca are said to have told associates they have been in talks for a possible next act at Netflix.
De Luca and Abdy‘s tenure heading up Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group began in 2022 and has been marked by highs and lows. The highs have included box office successes like the Minecraft Movie ($960 million, globally) and Ryan Coogler’s Sinners ($370 million, globally), along with critical achievements like last year’s Oscars best picture win for Paul Thomas Anderson‘s One Battle After Another and other wins for Sinners. The misfires have included expensive swings like Maggie Gyllenhaal‘s The Bride! and Tom Cruise starrer Digger, which is tracking to open this weekend to a dismal $8 million to $15 million on a $125 million-plus budget.
De Luca and Abdy joined Warner Bros. from MGM, where they oversaw that storied studio’s film slate for two years until its 2022 $8.5 billion acquisition by Amazon Prime Video. At Warners, they inherited a slate from the previous regime, headed by Toby Emmerich, that included Legendary’s Dune franchise and the box office hit Barbie, along with Bong Joon Ho‘s Mickey 17 and Robert De Niro starrer The Alto Knights, the latter of which was personally greenlit by Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav.
As for their own auspices, the duo is known for being director-friendly, offering a big studio home (and big studio budgets) to filmmakers like Anderson, Coogler, Alejandro Iñárritu and Emerald Fennell. The auteur-driven titles were buffeted by a series of IP plays and franchise offerings, predominantly hailing from the studio’s New Line division, De Luca’s longtime stomping grounds, like the well-received Final Destination reboot and a Conjuring installment.
De Luca and Abdy’s exit comes amid a flurry of other executive announcements at the soon-to-be-combined studio. Earlier this week, Cindy Holland exited her post as Paramount Skydance’s streaming chief, with HBO boss Casey Bloys expected to lead all streaming efforts at the combined studios. Also this week, it was announced that Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz would come on as co-CEO with Ellison.
Puck first reported the news of De Luca and Abdy‘s exit.