Back when WarnerMedia announced that they would be releasing their 2021 slate in theaters and on HBO Max on the same day, a lot of directors –i.e., Christopher Nolan (among others—had spoken out about how they thought it was a huge mistake on WB’s part. Now WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar has confirmed that the mess-up was his fault.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Kilar had admitted that he should have taken ‘the better part of a month’ to talk to over 170 people who would be greatly affected by the decision of the HBO Max same-day release model. He said during Vox Media’s Code Conference:
“I will be the first one to say, and the responsibility rests on my shoulders, that, in hindsight, we should have taken the better part of a month to have over 170 conversations — which is the number of participants that are in our 2021 film slate… We tried to do that in a compressed period of time, less than a week, because of course there was going to be leaks there was going to be everybody opining on whether we should do this or not do this.”
We don’t know what the future holds for WarnerMedia yet, but some are expecting that Kilar will be stepping down from his position soon.
If anything, the announcement of the same day release model did come at a time of great uncertainty, and HBO had taken a huge risk with the new model; it’s too bad they had to execute it so clumsily.
For now, the next big release for WB/HBO Max is Dune, and it’s set to hit theaters and the streaming service on Oct. 2.
