Warner Bros. and the Power of Knowing Your Audience

Not long ago, Warner Bros. was the kind of studio that could make The Dark Knight and The Departed in the same decade without explaining the contrast. These weren’t just profitable films, they also helped shape culture and made audiences feel like the studio stood for something. That kind of trust takes decades to build. It took much less time to lose.

The old Hollywood adage of “one for you, one for them,” i.e., make a few enormous films each year and let the revenue from those projects support the more creatively driven stories, seemed to work well enough. A superhero launch, a familiar sequel, a recognizable brand – the kind of movies once seen as too big to fail. However, that approach isn’t holding up. A project like The Flash, meant as a DC Universe reset, became a $200 million embarrassment. Black Adam flopped despite months of promotion, prompting Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to cite invented metrics. Joker: Folie à Deux, a sequel to one of the best and most surprising box office hits of the last decade, now feels like a film made more to provoke than to engage.

The environment has changed. Viewers haven’t stopped caring about movies, but they’ve stopped trusting that the biggest ones are being made for the right reasons. And that erosion of trust is mirrored inside the business itself. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) is now undergoing a corporate split into two companies after racking up billions in financial losses under David Zaslav’s leadership. One could credibly argue they’re in crisis. Projects meant to anchor the studio underperformed or imploded, triggering another restructuring that signals an end of an era. And layered on top of that is a culture of backlash that builds long before release day. Entire online communities have turned industry backlash into a profession, framing major releases as failures in waiting.

While the mediums and platforms for criticism may be new, the notion of detractors rooting for and pushing for institutions to fail is a tale as old as time. In a previous Dez Reads, we published an analysis on the stress surrounding James Gunn’s Superman and how WBD is staking their future on its success. Unfortunately, it has already become one of movie influencers’ favorite targets, not because it will fail, but because it exists. Superman, however, answered its critics this weekend with a commanding box office debut earning $122 million in the U.S. and Canada and $217 million globally.

These creators aren’t just reacting but pushing content tied to the system they’ve built their followings criticizing. Some of the loudest voices fueling this skepticism come from the same circles that demanded the #Snydercut, a movement born from a mix of genuine fans of director Zack Snyder along with online bot warfare. That dynamic hasn’t gone away. If anything, it’s grown louder and more hostile. As Dezenhall has been counseling clients for decades, your crisis is someone else’s meal ticket. In this case, influencers are cashing in.

Meanwhile, the studios haven’t adjusted. They continue to fund enormous films without answering the essential question: who is this movie for? Intellectual property (IP) still gets prioritized, but brand names now feel like a trap rather than a hook. Films that might have once earned the benefit of the doubt now walk into a room full of skeptics, whose minds have been made up before the first trailer was released.

The response to this can’t be more noise. It won’t come from a bigger marketing campaign or a more recognizable cameo. It comes from rethinking the process behind what gets made, not from panic, but from a commitment to craft and creative authorship. Operations must drive communications. Audiences are still ready to show up, just look at Sinners. They just aren’t willing to be fooled.

A24 has carved out a loyal audience by doing something deceptively simple: by taking creative risks, prioritizing craft, and trusting that smart, original storytelling will find its people. There’s no reason WBD shouldn’t be doing the exact same thing, on a larger scale, with deeper resources, and a legacy that has already shaped generations of filmgoers. WBD doesn’t need to compete with A24, it has every tool necessary to absorb and expand that audience. The appetite for thoughtful, distinctive films is already there. WBD just needs to start feeding it.

A new roadmap, one that rethinks content from the ground up and pairs creative decisions with a smarter, sharper, and more modern communications strategy, allows not just WBD to reshape their image as a creative titan while finding financial success and delivering shareholder value, but also for the industry itself to (re)evolve into a true expression of art on film.

1. Smaller Budgets, Bigger Swings:

Tighter budgets can and must be used to liberate creativity. Today’s audiences, especially younger viewers, aren’t given the credit they deserve. Raised on a century’s worth of film and television, they have developed a sharp eye for tropes and clichés. They gravitate toward stories that feel new and daring and constantly seek out authenticity.

Take Late Night with the Devil, which was produced for just $2 million, earned a $15 million return and critical acclaim, thanks to a refreshing concept that audiences hadn’t seen before. That’s the formula to emulate: leaner productions that take risks and deliver something fresh.

The box office today is driven by online conversation, but that kind of buzz can’t be manufactured. It has to grow from something real. Greta Gerwig’s Barbie succeeded because WBD embraced the organic Barbenheimer phenomenon and played to a generation hungry for nostalgia. Going forward, that instinct shouldn’t be reactive but rather embedded in the process.

This means backing filmmakers who are naturally fluent in the cultural language of the moment, such as younger storytellers or those closely connected to their world. By empowering these new voices, we can seed stories that resonate deeply and authentically, sparking engagement that lasts beyond a meme cycle, fostering authentic enthusiasm and word-of-mouth support.

Until the recent success of Sinners, a narrative was building about the demise of original movies. The idea that a period piece vampire movie could turn the whole industry around seemed more than improbable. Great films emerge when vision, not formula, guides production. As shown with Tommy Boy, a film can succeed with a simple premise when it’s shaped with vision and care.

2. Owning the Narrative Through Smarter Strategy:

To ensure this creative shift resonates beyond the screen, it needs a communications strategy built for today’s new media environment. WBD has the opportunity to pair bold storytelling with a narrative strategy that is equally intentional and adaptive.

This means positioning WBD as the studio that champions originality, empowers emerging talent, and engages with the influencer class while listening closely to its audience. That message must move as agilely as the content itself.

The result is a closed loop where creative risk is backed by strategic foresight, and each release is part of a unified cultural conversation. When both sides move in sync, relevance isn’t a gamble. It’s built in.

“Stop trying to make ‘fetch’ happen.” – Regina George

Warner Bros.’ recent history offers a powerful lesson for communicators and industry leaders. In today’s media environment, trust is fragile, and criticism moves fast. Creative and strategic choices have to be grounded in what people actually want to see, not what studios think people want to see. Understand your actual audience, not who you want or perceive them to be.

The entertainment industry can take a page from crisis management; it’s no longer just about damage control after a flop but staying ahead of the conversation. Staying ahead of public sentiment is the new standard. WBD missed those signals and is seeing what can quickly escalate into a full-blown crisis that undermines both financial performance and cultural relevance.

What happens next matters. The studios that endure will be the ones that build crisis thinking into everything they do and will be the ones who treat reputation as part of the creative process, not a reaction to what went wrong.

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