Interested in acquiring the rights to the iconic theme for 1989’s Batman? Now’s your chance. As reported by Consequence.net, Warner Bros. Discovery is currently in negotiations to sell around half of their film and television music-publishing catalog, with an altogether price of $500 million.
While it is currently unknown which assets are to be sold, the current rumors include music from Purple Rain, Evita, Sweeny Todd, and of course Batman, with many more possibilities yet to be determined. Most interesting would be the speculated sale of “As Time Goes By’ from the 1942 film Casablanca, which has been used for Warner Bros. production logos since the 90’s.
While some insiders argue that this sale comes at a good time, both during a boom in the music-publishing market and while the company is in nearly $50 billion in debt, others argue that there is little use for these older properties and cite other possible means to chip away at the debt, such as CEO David Zaslav’s salary of $40m a year (including stocks and bonuses).
Since the merger of WarnerMedia and Discover Inc. in 2022, in which Zaslav was given the position of CEO, the company has been abuzz with controversy. Layoffs in October 2022 led to the elimination of 26% of Warner Bros. Television Group’s workforce, and just few days ago we saw top executives from Adult Swim, Travel Channel, Discovery, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), TLC, Animal Planet, and more all given the ax, leaving many questioning the future of the company. Most notably were filmmakers Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Paul Thomas Anderson, who gathered for an emergency meeting with Zaslav in regards to the TCM channel. The company has also began selling the licensing to multiple HBO-owned shows, with even rival streamer Netflix among potential buyers.
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