One hit after another with the heads of Warner Bros.

Photo by Benjamin Price, Features and Entertainment Editor

“You have to do the job like you're not afraid to lose it.”

Those were the words of Michael De Luca. Words that, along with his fellow chair of the motion picture division at Warner Bros, Pam Abdy, he followed by taking a chance on three large-scale, original visions that paid off in a big way, “Sinners,” “Weapons” and “One Battle After Another.” In a slate built on a flurry of familiar brands from “The Conjuring” to “Superman,” the three films together made $800 million and earned a collective 30 Oscar nominations.

During their master class at Dodge College of Film and Media Arts on Feb. 9, they walked students through a year built on big swings and big hits, and the evolution of their Hollywood careers. A rarity for the format, which often favors actors and various other kinds of film creatives, students got to hear from the executive suite. The role has taken on new resonance with Seth Rogen’s Apple TV+ comedy “The Studio” shining a light on the day-to-day experience — meetings, screening cuts of upcoming films, building a release slate, etc.

“It's a comedy, so what they're not interested in getting is all the stuff about the job that makes it feel like you're a patron of the arts, but you're also the curator of a slate for a business that can monetize the art and…to be both responsible to the fiscal side of things, but also the artistic side of things,” De Luca said. “That would be an hour-long drama that wouldn’t be a lot of fun to watch, so (Rogen) gets the funny, petty shit right.”

The duo even teased that they may have helped give the writing team behind the popular series some new fodder for their upcoming season.

The audience also got to hear about their respective backgrounds and how they got involved in movies. New Jersey-born Abdy spent most of her youth pursuing a career in dance all the way into college. After a devastating foot fracture, a film class and a semester in Los Angeles led her to pivot into working for Danny Devito’s production company, Jersey Films.

Together and apart, Abdy and De Luca’s time in the movie business has been defined by advancing and taking on new roles right on the precipice of crisis. When their time running a studio together began at MGM, their tenure started right before a global pandemic that closed theaters for a year and ended with an acquisition by Amazon. 

De Luca’s stint at Sony as co-president of production was cut short about a year in when the studio got hacked in retaliation for producing the comedy “The Interview.” The laugh-out-loud comedy followed an attempt to assassinate North Korean supreme leader, Kim Jong Un.

And that same oft-fraught atmosphere didn’t dissipate once they started running Warner Bros. After back-to-back flops in “Mickey 17” and “The Alto Knights,” both greenlit by a previous administration and with a series of future films whose eventual profitability was in doubt, the knives were out for the pair, and many outlets seemed to hint that they would soon be out of a job. 

They came back swinging with two mega-hits of a very different nature: “A Minecraft Movie,” which went on to be the highest-grossing movie of the year in the U.S., and the phenomenon that was Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.” Warner Bros. and Coogler’s film found itself scrutinized by much of Hollywood for the rare deal brokered, where the rights to the film would revert to Coogler after 25 years, but De Luca and Abdy stand behind the decision.

“It's Ryan Coogler! He walked in the door with a very personal story, (it was) very specific to this story. This movie was about Black ownership, and Ryan says it best, you can listen to any of his interviews,” Abdy said. “And it was Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan who walked in the door with a commercial film that spoke to us on the page emotionally, and we couldn't be more proud to be part of that movie with him.”

“One Battle After Another,” considered by many to be the current frontrunner to win Best Picture at the Oscars, is the latest project after decades of collaboration between Michael De Luca and Paul Thomas Anderson, who first met when De Luca was at his first post at New Line Cinema. De Luca first met Anderson when the script for “Boogie Nights” crossed his desk and made such an impact that he advocated for his next film to be greenlit at New Line without any knowledge of what it would be.

“(Paul) felt like he was born of film itself … so anyone sitting in front of him in that meeting would have felt like this is someone who's destined to be one of the greats,” De Luca said. “When you're lucky enough in our line of work to come across voices and filmmaking talent that you feel like they're going to go on a run and have a body of work that any studio would be proud of,  I thought Paul could be that for New Line.”

De Luca’s former home studio, funnily enough, is now under his purview at Warner Bros. and produced last year’s “Weapons” after being merged with the studio in 2008.

Their year of triumphs ended with something of a shock for the team when it was announced in early December that Netflix was looking to acquire the studio and its motion picture division. De Luca seemed optimistic that he and Abdy will still be able to take similar risks even under new ownership.

“(Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos) has said that our 2025 … shows that there's a healthy theatrical audience (and)...that there's a real business there … they'll still do their business,” De Luca said. “They do a very good job at their business (streaming), and I think that they see the value in our business (theatrical releases).”

For now, however, De Luca and Abdy are on something of a victory lap, celebrating the year they’ve had. Those so-called risks yielded a great deal of reward on Oscar nomination morning. Warner Bros. became the first studio to have both of the two most-nominated films, “Sinners” and “One Battle,” since Paramount in the early 1970s. 

De Luca and Abdy had an “if you build it, they will come” attitude to making movies for movie theaters at the studio, and it paid off. And for De Luca, bringing original work to the screen was vital in what he called a wasteland of chapter nines and 10s of franchises.

“And then there's a whole other faction that's like, ‘They're not coming. Don't build it.’ And we're like, ‘We’ve got to build it.’”