Channing Dungey reveals she is doing all she can to reduce costs
Warner Bros Television Group (WBTVG) chief Channing Dungey has warned that buyers are seeking to cut costs as she called time on TV’s “spending bubble”.
In a wide-ranging keynote at Content London yesterday, the studios chief set out WBTVG’s ambition to work on shows at all price points, noting a shift from buyers to be more financially responsible.
“We’re coming out of an era where things were unnecessarily inflated, so it’s about bringing that back down and being more responsible about how we do things,” she said. “We were in a bit of a spending bubble and 2022 has shown us that the big talk in the industry is about managing costs.”
“The [talk around the] stock market about the value of studios has put pressure on costs. It’s about figuring out what are we going to do differently to not compromise what we’re doing.”
WBTVG has recently been a victim of parent Warner Bros Discovery’s cost-saving measures with 125 roles cut in October – a quarter of its workforce.
Dungey noted that the group has been “cross-boarding shows to save on location and time” and shooting in places where it can secure production incentives.
“We’re looking at everything we can to bring costs down,” she said. “People are taking a much harder look at that than they had before.”
She went on to talk up the benefit of the relaxation of the vertically-integrated strategy which the streaming giants and US studios embraced during the content arms.
WBTVG is “closing a deal with Amazon” for DC-branded animation content to go on the streaming rival, while there is no diktat suggesting the division should be solely producing for HBO Max.
“The approach by previous management was everything has to stay in-house, we don’t want anything to go outside,” Dungey said.
“David Zaslav is much more open to us exploring options for our animated IP, perhaps doing it on different platforms. HBO Max is our first stop, but it gives the opportunity for more of that content to be explored by the audience.”
Reboots
Elsewhere, Dungey said that the majority of the studio’s biggest scripted successes are original IP, with a catalogue which includes HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, ABC comedy Abbott Elementary and Starz dramedy Shining Vale.
“An original idea is always going to carry more weight than a remake or a reboot,” Dungey said. “It’s always exciting to find people willing to take that big swing on something fresh.”
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