David Zaslav earned $49.7 million in a year when Warner Bros. Discovery struggled
Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. slogged through layoffs, box office bombs, devastating Hollywood labor strikes and a lagging stock price, but for Chief Executive David Zaslav, 2023 was a very good year.
Zaslav received a compensation package valued at $49.7 million, according to a Friday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission . The amount was 26% higher than his 2022 total pay plan of $39.3 million.
The total keeps Zaslav, 64, among an elite class of the U.S.’s most handsomely paid corporate executives.
During last year’s labor unrest, Zaslav was blasted by Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA members for his high earnings at a time when companies, including Warner Bros. Discovery, were making deep cuts in their workforces and programming expenditures.
A 2023 Los Angeles Times analysis showed that Zaslav had received compensation of nearly $500 million during the five-year period between 2018 and 2022, more than any other top Hollywood executive during that same time period.
Zaslav especially has been criticized as a symbol of excess in Hollywood. A speech he gave last year at Boston University’s commencement ceremony was greeted with boos and chants to “pay your writers.”
Pay for Hollywood’s top executives as a whole soared during the height of the pandemic, climbing to $1.43 billion in 2021, up 50% from total pay in 2018, according to the Times analysis, which used data compiled by the research firm Equilar Inc.
A Times survey tallies the paydays for the heads of Warner Bros. Discovery, Netflix and more. The issue has become a hot topic on picket lines during the writers’ strike.
The average pay for top Hollywood executives increased 53% to $28 million between 2018 and 2021. During that same time period, the average compensation for writers stayed basically flat, totaling $260,007 in 2021, according to WGA data.
Zaslav’s compensation in 2023 was composed mostly of stock awards ($23 million) and a cash bonus ($22 million), in addition to his base salary of $3 million.
In its filing, Warner Bros. Discovery said Zaslav was rewarded for the “successful launch” last year of Max, as well as laying the groundwork for the streaming service’s international expansion this year. He was also credited with overseeing “significant” net debt reduction efforts.
His pay now is in the range of what other media moguls make. Netflix Inc.’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters earned $49.8 million and $40.1 million, respectively, last year, according to a filing Thursday. Netflix shares rose 65% in 2023.
Walt Disney Co.’s Bob Iger made $31.6 million, a big increase from the prior year after returning to the CEO job. Disney shares rose 3.9%. Paramount Global’s Bob Bakish earned $31.3 million in 2023, a year in which the shares fell 12%.
Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery were up 1.48% to $8.43 late Friday morning. The stock is down about 40% from the same time last year.
Zaslav’s compensation, and that of other senior Warner Bros. executives, was tied in part to the company’s generation of free cash flow, an incentive for executives to produce income that could be used to reduce debt.
Warner Bros. generated about $1 billion more cash than expected because of a lack of film and TV production during the strikes, but that number was excluded from Zaslav’s pay calculations. The company’s cash flow still exceeded projections thanks to revenue increases and cost reductions.
Bloomberg reporting was used in compiling this article.
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