David Zaslav at the Sun Valley conference. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
In a memorable kicker to a 2023 profile, David Zaslav recalled a dinner years ago at the Hamptons home of the late singer Jimmy Buffett. “We have to keep our seats,” the Warner Bros. Discovery chief reportedly told then-HBO boss Richard Plepler at the time. “Jimmy is a legend, but without the jobs, we’re nothing.”
On Thursday, as WBD fielded non-binding bids for a corporate sale, Zaslav took another step toward adding millions more dollars to his already sizable personal portfolio, and potentially, in his eyes, nothingness.
Whether Zaslav still has a “seat” at the mogul table is just one of the questions surrounding WBD’s future, as the company weighs…
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Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande in "Wicked: For Good." (Giles Keyte/Universal Pictures)
‘Wicked’ For the Win: Like Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “Wicked” should be considered as one sweeping, five-hour canvas. And if the slightly shorter second half doesn’t fully measure up to the original—in part due to front loading of the best songs—that does little to detract from director Jon M. Chu’s overall accomplishment, or the emotional wallop of the concluding chapter, “Wicked: For Good.”
Indeed, where the first movie soared in part thanks to its timing, landing in theaters a few weeks after the 2024 election, the second feels even timelier, with the not-so-wonderful Wizard (Jeff Goldblum, put to better use this time) lying to Oz’s residents by demonizing the animal population, disseminating propaganda and questioning whether there’s even such a thing as “truth.”
Fighting the good fight, meanwhile, is Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo), a character now at the height of witchy powers, which nicely describes the actor too (she’s an Oscar short of an EGOT), especially when she rattles the rafters with “No Good Deed,” easily the standout showstopper. Three new tunes, by contrast, are mostly forgettable.
While critics often reach to hang cultural weight on mass entertainment, one needn’t possess a graduate degree in film studies to see…
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