Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca, co-chairs and chief executive officers of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, are posing for a photo in the Scenic Loft on the studio’s historic lot. You may remember this as the backdrop from a scene in “The Studio,” where the head of a fictional Hollywood institution, played by Seth Rogen, learns he’s finally landed his dream job. That is, if he can get a four-quadrant movie based on a popular drink mix off the ground. The duo thinks the Emmy-winning series is a funny “caricature of the industry” — except for, well, one aspect: getting that Kool-Aid movie on track.
“You can’t help but think of the way Hollywood turned to tentpoles and franchises, temporarily forgetting sometimes that everything was original once,” De Luca says. “And if you don’t refresh the coffers with new IP to create new franchises, at some point you get to Chapter 10 or 11 and people start to move on.”
That being said, Abdy admits that when her brother asked her if the series was what her life was really like, she replied, “Eh, it’s heightened. But yes.”
Indeed, like Rogen’s character, the pair have — against almost insurmountable odds — completely transformed their own 102-year-old institution. The veteran film executives and producers first met and became friends 30 years ago when their paths crossed on the now-forgotten dramedy “Living Out Loud.” Decades later, they found themselves recruited to turn around MGM Studios. That short stint was immediately derailed by the COVID-19 pandemic and a surprise Amazon acquisition, but their impressive taste made Hollywood take notice. They ended up greenlighting eventual best picture nominees “Licorice Pizza” and “Nickel Boys” as well as box-office hits “House of Gucci” and “Challengers.”
In July 2022, they jumped to Burbank, and three years later, their 2025 slate not only grossed more than $4 billion at the box office but made Oscar history. Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” earned a record 16 Academy Award nominations and joined Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” and Joseph Kosinski’s “F1” as best picture nominees. (“F1,” produced and financed by Apple Studios, was distributed and marketed by WB worldwide.) No domestic distributor has earned three best picture nominees since Paramount Pictures 51 years ago. All on De Luca and Abdy’s watch.
As with most studios, the creative partners invest in internal development but want to be a destination where filmmakers of all varieties, including auteurs, bring their projects for “white glove” treatment — a key selling point for Coogler, Anderson and their producing partners. Both projects were shrouded in secrecy, something the pair had experienced at MGM when they had to read “Oppenheimer” at Christopher Nolan’s house. (Universal landed the project, but they were told they were the quickest readers.) “One Battle” required a road trip to Anderson’s home in Tarzana, and an executive from Coogler’s Proximity Media stayed in the room with the execs while they read that screenplay on the lot.
“We just knew we had to have [‘Sinners’] because we thought it would really connect with an audience on a very deep emotional level,” De Luca recalls. “And then at the first test screening, you could hear the racking sobs in that third act. Everybody left in tears, and that was very validating to see that the test audience had the same reaction that we did when we read the script.”
Having worked with Anderson three times previously, De Luca knew “One Battle” was special from “word one,” adding that the filmmaker writes scripts in a manner that “you can see the movie in your head from the first paragraph.”
Abdy reflects, “I was recently saying to Mike, ‘On May 13th, 2023, the world was very different, and the times caught up to the movie,’ but there was such an urgency to this film. This movie was about freedom and about expression and about love of a parent and a daughter.”
“Also, a generational theme,” De Luca adds. “A call to action [for] the young generation to take it over for yourselves and sweep away the old and go out there and effect change. But it was really funny. It read like an action-comedy dystopian satire because it was at that time. But then, as Pam said, what do you do when the real world catches up to you?”
The studio was also gifted with a supporting actress nomination for Amy Madigan’s performance as the now-iconic Aunt Gladys in Zach Cregger’s “Weapons.”
De Luca recalls calling people into their office to watch Madigan’s dailies, but that quickly came to an end. He reveals, “I stopped watching dailies on that because Zach is so surprising that I just wanted to go to the first test screening and experience the movie. And it was like a roller coaster.”
The studio heads were so impressed with the audience reaction they essentially locked the movie after that first test. They also made a decision that may have assisted in the adoration for Madigan, and kept the character a secret in the marketing campaign. Abdy recalls, “One night very early on right after ‘Weapons’ had opened, I was out at an Academy Museum event with a lot of other members of the academy, and there was a lot of buzz about her. We did think, ‘Well, her peers are going to recognize this performance.’”
Neither executive wants to pick favorites, but Abdy is thrilled for “Sinners” supporting actor nominee Delroy Lindo (“He is one of the most soulful, beautiful people we’ve ever had the privilege to work with”), while De Luca is moved by the posthumous nomination for “One Battle” producer Adam Somner, a longtime Anderson collaborator who died in 2024 and told the filmmaker it was finally time to make the long-gestating project.
Abdy and De Luca re-upped their contracts in October and expect to stay on if Netflix’s acquisition of Warner Bros. is approved by shareholders. They have prestige titles including Alejandro González Iñárritu’s “Digger” and Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune: Part Three” in the hopper as well as Christian Parkes’ new division, meant for films of the A24 or Neon variety. When the number of films at the recent Sundance Film Festival that appeared to have distribution issues comes up, the pair took a rare view in this town in 2026: a glass-half-full one.
De Luca laughs, “Don’t you feel like everyone’s skeptical about every movie doing well? Why is everything so negative, man?”
Abdy adds, “Shouldn’t this be a time for optimism and joy in our industry, in the world? Movies can do that.”
Maybe they really could pull off a Kool-Aid movie.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
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