UPDATE 10/2: The offers were real. Our insiders say Bloys was “openly signaling he was willing to exit,” and HBO’s biggest producers lobbied Ellison to keep him.
UPDATE 9/29: Hours later, Cindy Holland announced her exit, with Bloys expected to take all of streaming.
HBO boss Casey Bloys is playing competing offers as the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger closes, a Cosmic Book News insider tells us.
The same insider says the friendly Bloys stories that hit the trades this past week are part of it, coming from executives trying to save their own reputations.
“Deadline and Puck are pretty much running rumors from competing execs in Warners-Par trying to save their reputations (see James Gunn) and Bloys is savvy enough to play competing offers since the transition period has a lot of negotiation going on,” the insider tells us.
The James Gunn aside refers to the year of conflicting stories about Gunn’s DC future. Our reporting hasn’t moved: Gunn’s contract expires in 2027.
Photograph by Presley Ann/Getty Images for WarnerMedia & Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for WarnerMedia
Image via WBD official press site
Two Pro-Bloys Stories In One Week
Deadline went first. Bloys brought Paramount TV chief George Cheeks as his plus-one to the September 22 New York premiere of HBO’s War, the divorce drama starring Dominic West and Sienna Miller.
Per Deadline, the night was arranged weeks in advance, and it landed one day after Paramount settled with California, clearing the merger to close.
Deadline compared it to David Zaslav showing up at the Succession premiere while the last Warner Bros. merger was being finalized, and reported Bloys is expected to be central to David Ellison’s plans.
Then came Puck.
Kim Masters wrote that an industry veteran calls Bloys the smartest operator of the transition: he let everyone know from the start that “he is never reporting to” Paramount streaming chief Cindy Holland, betting Ellison values him too much to force it.
Masters added that word getting out about Bloys’ Netflix lunch shows he would have no trouble finding his next job.
Masters also had doubts about Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy in the same column. Our insiders shot that down: De Luca and Abdy are staying at Warner Bros.
The Contract Is Up In 2027
Here is the negotiation the insider is talking about.
Bloys’ five-year HBO deal runs through 2027, and no extension has been signed. On September 9, we reported HBO Max could be gone and Bloys out after the merger.
The combined company won’t run HBO Max and Paramount+ side by side forever, and Paramount has already put its streaming endgame in writing.
Deadline’s report matches the standoff. Whether Bloys and Cindy Holland both stay comes down to how streaming leadership gets set up, since neither would report to the other.
And Netflix is the other chair at the table. Bloys lunched with Ted Sarandos in March, weeks after Netflix walked away from its own Warner Bros. deal.
Put it together: a boss with an expiring deal, a merger closing within days, and two places he could land. Every story that says Bloys stays raises his price.
It’s the same insider drop behind the Dark Knight Returns two-parter report.
“He’s Playing Hard To Get”
A second source goes further. A Paramount insider tells us the friendly coverage is coming straight from Bloys’ own side.
“Have to say this is the second PR article from Bloys team in one week. First Deadline and now Puck,” the Paramount insider said. “That tells me he’s playing hard to get.”
“He’s letting all the streamers know he’s up for grabs,” the insider continued. “But ya gotta pay.”
The insider also flagged the timeline: “His contract is not up until late 2027, lot of things can happen.”
It’s the same source behind our September 9 report, and per the insider, the exit talk was real. The bar for leaving is specific.
“I was told he was fielding offers and looking to exit. But are the offers worth the trouble?” the insider said. “He’s not moving to report to some Disney exec. He’s moving if he gets to report to D’Amaro or to Sarandos [directly].”
Josh D’Amaro became Disney CEO in March. Sarandos is Netflix’s co-CEO. Anything less than a direct line to the top, and Bloys isn’t moving.
As the insider says, ya gotta pay.
One more from the same insider: the plan at Skydance Animation is 70s/80s Spielberg-Lucas event movies.
