UPDATE 9/29: An insider now explains the year: the 2026 slate was horror by design during the sale, and De Luca and Abdy are staying.
UPDATE 9/24: The infighting over this year’s box office has started, and Warner Bros. staffers say DC “chose the wrong comic book character” with Supergirl.
UPDATE 9/15: The BIG CHANGES come into view: Godzilla vs Transformers and “Make Movies Fun Again”, as Paramount holds meetings over the HBO backlash.
Warner Bros. finished sixth at the summer box office, behind Lionsgate and A24, and the people about to buy the studio know it.
“Paramount execs are painfully aware of this disaster,” a Paramount insider tells Cosmic Book News. “BIG CHANGES coming, just gotta let it all play out.”
Sixth Place In A Record Summer
Deadline’s summer 2026 studio rankings came out Monday. The summer set an all-time domestic record at $4.76 billion.
Universal led with $1.23 billion. Disney took $1.03 billion. Sony hit $1 billion.
Then Lionsgate at $270 million. Then A24 at $244 million.
Warner Bros. came in sixth at $239.3 million, down 76% from summer 2025.
A year ago, Warner Bros. was the summer’s second-place studio on Superman, Weapons, and F1, with A Minecraft Movie and Sinners still adding money.
It finished 2025 second overall to Disney at $4.4 billion worldwide, with nine number-one openings and a record seven straight movies opening above $40 million.
WBD’s own letter to shareholders on August 6 admitted the first half of 2026 “fell short of our expectations.”
Three Bombs In One Summer
Warner Bros. put three would-be tentpoles into the summer. All three lost money.
Mortal Kombat II opened May 8 and finished with $129.5 million worldwide on an $80 million budget, well short of the roughly $200 million it needed to break even. As Cosmic Book News reported, it was on VOD a month later.
The script came from Jeremy Slater, one of the writers James Gunn recruited into his DC Studios writers room. Slater took a hard turn from the first movie’s setup, benching its lead, Cole Young, for Adeline Rudolph’s Kitana, Tati Gabrielle’s Jade, and Karl Urban’s washed-up white dude Johnny Cage.
Then came James Gunn’s own Supergirl on June 26, and it did worse. The DC Studios follow-up to Superman opened to $37.1 million and stalled at $126.4 million worldwide against a budget north of $170 million.
That’s a projected loss of $100 million or more, a total that couldn’t catch Morbius, and the fallout has already reached the executive suite.
In August, The End of Oak Street — the dinosaur movie J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot produced for Warner Bros. — opened to $21 million and sits at $115.5 million worldwide on a budget Deadline put at $80 million to $92 million.
As we reported, that opening made Warner Bros. 0-for-8 on $40 million openings in 2026.
Abrams is already halfway out the door. Bad Robot closed its Los Angeles office in April and moved to New York, where Abrams now lives, and its Warner Bros. deal runs out at the end of the year.
Even the summer release that made money for WB shrank.
Evil Dead Burn turned a small profit on a horror budget, but it did $72.3 million worldwide where Evil Dead Rise did $147.1 million three years ago. The opening fell from $24.5 million to $13.7 million.
This is the disaster the Paramount insider is talking about.
Mike And Pam Are Mending Fences
Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy run the Warner Bros. film studio. Per the insider, their job right now is repair work.
“Mike & Pam are furiously working to clean up the mess and mend fences with MANY directors & creatives who were mistreated and pushed out,” the insider said.
One of those directors could be Christopher Nolan.
Cosmic Book News has been reporting on the Warner Bros. exodus for weeks.
Some of the fence-mending is already on the record.
Zack Snyder said last month that De Luca and Abdy had him out to the Warner Bros. lot to screen a print of Excalibur, and our insiders say the two are already taking pitches as the takeover reshapes DC.
All Eyes On Three Movies
The insider named the three movies Paramount is watching between now and the end of the year.
“All eyes on Practical Magic 2 (‘women pictures,’ remember?) and Digger (Cruise’s Oscar lock),” the insider said. “And of course Dune 3 (Pattinson’s Oscar nom backup if Primetime doesn’t do it).”
Practical Magic 2 opens September 10 with Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman. The “women pictures” line is a callback to what this same insider told CBN last week: Paramount and Warner Bros. want real star vehicles for adult women back on the slate, and Practical Magic 2 is the first test.
Digger opens October 2. It’s Tom Cruise’s first original film in nearly a decade, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, at a budget Warner Bros. puts at $130 million. “Oscar lock” is the insider’s call, not the studio’s.
Dune: Part Three opens December 18 against Avengers: Doomsday. This same source called Robert Pattinson a “strong early Oscar favorite” for it back in August. The backup is Primetime, Pattinson’s A24 drama that premiered at Venice to a nine-minute ovation. Per the insider, if Primetime doesn’t get Pattinson the nomination, Dune 3 does.
WBD’s shareholder letter lists the same fall slate — Dune, Practical Magic 2, Digger — plus The Cat in the Hat. The studio is telling Wall Street what the insider is telling us: the year gets decided in the fourth quarter.
Let It Play Out
The $111 billion merger Paramount says is ready to close has its next court date on September 24.
It’s the same insider who told CBN today that HBO Max could be gone and Casey Bloys out once the deal closes.
The first of the three tests comes September 10, when Practical Magic 2 opens.
