Amid the abandonment of HBO Max’s Batgirl movie and the clear desire of the head of Warner Bros. Discovery’s David Zaslav to find new leadership for the DC universe, DC Films president Walter Hamada is on the verge of leaving the studio and is consulting with a lawyer, sources tell The Hollywood Reporter.
Hamada has now agreed to stay on at least until the Oct. 21 release of the Dwayne Johnson film Black Adam, according to sources familiar with the situation. “He’s taking a break,” says a source. “No decision has been made yet to make it competitive.” Hamada could not be reached for comment.
The tension comes as Zaslav vowed to do what he called a “reboot” of DC, with a 10-year plan he hopes will allow the brand to compete with Disney-owned Marvel Studios, which created the biggest film franchise in history. “We think we can build a much stronger business with sustainable growth than DC,” Zaslav said on Thursday’s earnings call. “As part of that, we will focus on quality. We’re not going to release a movie before it’s ready… DC is something we can do better.”
An insider says the co-chairmen and CEOs of Warner Bros. Pictures Group Michael De Luca and Pam Abdi, who are overseeing DC until Zaslav settles on new leadership, informed Hamada at a recent test screening of Black Adam that Batgirl, a $90 million film in post-production, would be delayed . The explanation was that given Zaslav’s strategy, the picture was not strong enough to be released in theaters and was too expensive to stream. The company, under pressure to cut costs, chose to write off the value of the project.
A source familiar with the situation said Hamada was upset that he had not been consulted and concerned about the impact on the people involved in the making of the film. On August 2, before the talent and their representatives were informed of the decision, the New York Post broke the news that the film had been shelved. The Post reported that the film scored poorly in tests and said a source described it as “incorrigible”.
In May, Warner Bros. Discovery canceled another DC film aimed at the streamer, Wonder Twins, just after KJ Apa and Isabel May were cast in the lead roles.
Hamada took on the role in 2018 during a difficult period for DC, which was struggling to find its footing after Justice League (2017) flopped at the box office and had no clear path forward for its cinematic universe.
During his tenure, Hamada built relationships with directors such as Marvel favorite James Gunn, casting him in The Suicide Squad (2021) and retaining him for Peacemaker, an HBO Max spinoff. Instead of aiming for the tightly interconnected universe of Marvel films, the DC properties under his watch were only loosely connected — and sometimes took place in completely separate universes, like The Joker (2019), which opened with over $1 billion at the box office and won Joaquin Phoenix’s Best Actor Oscar, and Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022), which brought in $769.2 million worldwide, a strong figure for the pandemic.
Prior to DC Films, Hamada was evp production at New Line, where he oversaw the label’s wildly successful genre horror franchise The Conjuring and It (2017), which grossed $701.8 million at the box office.
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