You may not remember the name Jason Kilar, but you’ll certainly remember the most famous thing he did during his brief tenure as CEO of WarnerMedia – ‘Project Popcorn’.
The Hulu co-founder was appointed to the position in early-mid 2020, just as the pandemic got underway and then, in December of that year, made the shock announcement that every Warner Bros. Pictures release for the next year would hit HBO Max at the same time as they were released in cinemas – starting with “Wonder Woman 1984” that month.
That decision had repercussions for the industry as a whole, and Kilar left the job in April 2022 following the merger of Warners and Discovery – David Zaslav subsequently taking over as CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Now, this past week’s news about the $82.7 billion Netflix-Warner Bros. deal has again shaken the industry as a whole, once again being perceived as a danger to the industry, and more specifically to theatrical exhibition.
Kilar has now weighed in on that deal on X, saying he’s not a fan of WB being sold to Netflix as he is less concerned about cinemagoing and more concerned about shrinking:
“If I was tasked with doing so, I could not think of a more effective way to reduce competition in Hollywood than selling WBD to Netflix. When I use the phrase competition in Hollywood, I am referring to having a sufficient number of vibrant and robust entities that can and will aggressively compete against each other to produce and distribute films, series, live events and more for decades to come. I am not focused on the legacy of it all.”
Kilar’s initiative is considered to have played a part in ‘training’ audiences into expecting films on home platforms so soon after their theatrical releases.
