EXCLUSIVE: If you focus on snarky and largely unsubstantiated reports, you might figure Warner Bros Pictures co-chairman/CEOs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy would spend this weekend boxing up their belongings. Using a couple flops and risky upcoming films as fodder, several reports with scant backup say their Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav is scouring for replacement candidates (which he denies in a tepid manner). Despite the rough press, De Luca and Abdy will actually spend this weekend same as their counterparts at other studios do: trying to keep an eye on kids while they read scripts, watch dailies and dream up slates for 2026 and beyond. The overheated reports quieted after A Minecraft Movie did way better than anyone imagined, and quickly joined another surprise blockbuster, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, as top priority sequels to go with other IP revivals from The Matrix to Practical Magic, Gremlins and Goonies.

I can also reveal the studio just set plans to revamp the Kevin Costner Whitney Houston smash The Bodyguard, with director Sam Wrench (Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour) and Jonathan A. Abrams (he scripted the Clint Eastwood-directed Juror No. 2 for Warner Bros.) I’ve known De Luca and Abdy a long time and encouraged them to let Deadline readers and the industry peek behind the curtain to see what is really going on at a studio that has been trying to pare debt and regain mojo lost when former chief Jason Kilar fumbled the relationship with cornerstone director Christopher Nolan during the pandemic, and watched him make Best Picture-winning blockbuster Oppenheimer at Universal. That pre-dated De Luca and Abdy, who are hoping that a deal with Black Panther and Creed director Ryan Coogler that begins with Sinners, will help to fill some of the void Nolan left and that Coogler, One Battle After Another director Paul Thomas Anderson, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Emerald Fennell, Margot Robbie and other elite filmmakers De Luca and Abdy have drawn there will show that Burbank is indeed a swell place to make big important movies. De Luca and Abdy here answer every question they were able to, painting a picture full of hope that they will be at the studio a good long time, and show Minecraft was no fluke.

Joining Deadline today from the hot seats in Burbank, let’s welcome Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy…

[Both of them laugh]

You’ve both been around long enough to have taken punches and scored successes as execs and producers. Considering the speculative press coverage you might be replaced, what kind of toll does it take on filmmaker friendly executives, when your job is, as Sinners writer/director Ryan Coogler told Deadline a couple days ago, to empower movies that are going to get people to leave their home TVs and go to theaters?

De Luca: We are veterans and you do develop a thick skin as you roll along here. We just try to drown out the noise and keep our heads down, and do the best job we can do. I think what’s different about this era from times past is we’re now living in this era of industrial complex snark. With the rise of clickbait journalism and the propensity to lean into anonymous sources and fake news, you just kind of realize, well, this is the moment we’re in. And these jobs come with a certain amount of scrutiny. That’s fair. We were given a mandate to take swings with original material, with the world’s best storytellers. And those kind of films are always going to get the most scrutiny. That just comes with the territory. So we just try to stay focused on doing the work.

Pam Abdy: I don’t think the pressure to picking movies and deciding what movies to make and the movie making process has dramatically changed over the decades that we’ve been doing it. It’s still the same idea of picking right. Sometimes you’re going to pick winners, sometimes you’re not. Sometimes you’re going to pick movies that are critically applauded and then don’t find an audience. I think what’s more difficult in this era is what you were saying earlier, is about how do you get audiences to come out of the house and it’s the chemistry and alchemy of all the things coming together at the same time. Whether that’s the concept of the movie, the talent that’s directing the film, the dating of the film, what’s going on in the world around it. I think that’s what has become a little more challenging. It lifts the pressure of it all, but I think that makes the job still exciting. And like Mike said, we’ve been doing this a long time and people are going to punch us all the time. But I’m from Jersey and he’s from Brooklyn and we can handle the hits.

I suppose the problem becomes when stories are reported with certainty that make an exit a self-fulfilling prophecy. You’ve won big properties on the auction block from Coogler’s Sinners to Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. How much of a concern do you have that this press narratives puts you at disadvantage to compete for the next package you’ll want on the Warner Bros slate?

De Luca: I don’t think we’ll ever shrink back from our commitment to pursue the best storytellers in the business. Warners has always been a home for the world’s best cinematic storytellers, from Clint Eastwood and Stanley Kubrick to Chris Nolan, and to today with Greta Gerwig and now Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s part of the studio’s DNA. When we arrived, we were given an unambiguous mandate to continue that tradition. We’re proud of that legacy. It’s unique really amongst the legacy studios in its consistency over the last half century. But that tradition will entail having the courage to both land and roll the dice on original films from these filmmakers. And it’s definitely not for the faint of heart, but that’s okay. Talents like Ryan and Paul remove a lot of the risk, through sheer excellence and artistry. With Ryan, it’s a long-term investment, planting him at the studio, as you mentioned, in terms of the comparison to Nolan. Planting with this film and going on a decades long run with him for the future. That will be the true measure of success.

That would be the big win. Tom Rothman made a rights reversion deal  at Sony for Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood, and it got him a great film that won Brad Pitt an Oscar, but also positioned him to have Sony release the final film Tarantino will direct. Critics have pointed to the downside of financing films that don’t end up in the library forever, even though it’s 25 years away. You clearly had to agree to an exceptional deal to get Sinners. Why in your mind was it worth it?

De Luca: Ryan is what makes it special. Ryan is an incredibly special artist. He’s unique and you can count on the fingers of one hand the filmmakers that write and direct commercial originals. He’s in rarified air and if, by doing this one, he becomes part of the studio family for the next 20 years or 25 years, however long he wants to keep making movies…there are going to be all kinds of different movies. The deal Ryan made for Sinners was unique to the competitive atmosphere around Sinners. It doesn’t set the table for anything in the future, but what you do hope is you’re setting a table for Ryan, and that he knows he’s got a home here at Warner Brothers. If you turn around in 15 years and he’s gone on a Chris Nolan-like run with whatever comes out of his amazing, talented and uniquely special mind? That’s the victory.

The track record thus far is all hits with heart, in multiple genres…

De Luca: Filmmakers like this are in short supply. They’re extremely valuable to the culture, to the art form, to the audience, and to a studio. We really believe, and it’s echoed by our leadership here, that no studio has ever gone broke leaning into and banking on relationships with visionary filmmakers. It has never been a bad strategy, it has never been a bad business plan. And if you can collect as many as are available and create a feathered nest and go on a run with these talented filmmakers, you turn around after 25 years you’ve done something special. Alan Horn did this and before him, Steve Ross did this with the relationship with Clint and others. And Bob Daly and Terry Semel and the relationship with Clint and Kubrick. It’s a good business plan and it is a long-term strategy. You can’t apply short-term thinking to it. I think that’s really dangerous. If you shrink back from that commitment, the talent can perceive that you’re fair weather, and they’ll start to look elsewhere at who’s not going to be fair weather. Examples exist of the strategy working, but again, it’s not for the faint of heart, and you have to be consistent. It’s not a movie by movie strategy. You can’t overreact to ones that under-perform and you can’t overreact to ones that perform. You’re making a commitment to a filmmaker, an alliance with them, and that’s how you get 20, 30 years of business for your studio with these kinds of filmmakers. That’s the end goal.

Ryan Coogler told Deadline that he felt the studio’s embrace in making Sinners on the scale he desired. It’s a very different movie than a lot of genre, very different from Final Destination Bloodlines that you have coming from New Line. What about the film Sinners makes you feel excited about making this bet?

Abdy: It is elevated genre, which is genre that has a lot on its mind. Ryan, to me, is honestly one of the greats. I think he will go down…when we’re 30 years from now and maybe I’m teaching school or if I’m still alive, we will reflect back on Ryan’s career and what he contributed to cinema as one of the greats. Working with him was truly for Mike and I, and I can speak for Mike on this, one of the most collaborative, genuine, heartfelt, soulful, beautiful experiences we’ve had making a film. And while the film is very personal to Ryan, as he spoke to you about, it also speaks to a large audience. The movie plays like a big genre, yelling-at-the-screen type of movie. We’ve seen it play that way with audiences. You’ve seen it, Mike, right?

I saw it.

Abdy: So you saw that, once that genre stuff kicks in and the vampires come, the whole movie works because of the soul and the heart that is brought from the characters that Ryan created. And you go on this ride and you don’t know where this movie’s going to take you, and you’re constantly surprised. I think that can only come from Ryan’s mind and what he’s done cinematically, what he’s done viscerally, what he’s done with these characters that he created, that are unique to him. And I think it’s a ride that audiences will love. They need to go to the theater and watch it together. I’m telling you, it’s like even last week, the screening in New York when everyone started cheering and clapping and yelling at the screen, it’s magical. And you can’t get that any other way but in the theater.

An observation, and you tell me if it is fair. Warner Bros had Christopher Nolan a long time, with billions in grosses from the Batman Trilogy, Inception and others. Then he was handled clumsily during the pandemic release of Tenet, and what in hindsight seems a terrible decision to release the feature slate day and date. He didn’t have a movie that was directly impacted, but all this prompted Nolan to make his career-best film at Universal with Oppenheimer. How much of a priority is it for you to play a better long game, not only with Coogler but also Matt Reeves who’s at DC, Denis Villeneuve who’s completing the Dune trilogy at Legendary, Tom Cruise who’s making this movie with Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, and a few others? That mirrors the old Warners way, when it was Kevin Costner, Clint Eastwood, Mel Gibson, Steven Seagal, back in the day when more often than not, they’d make their movies at Warner Brothers?

De Luca: It’s a big priority for us. As I mentioned, it’s part of our legacy and part of our mandate that we were given to go restore that legacy. So it’s a big priority for us. I do think it’s an element of what we’re doing. We believe in a diversified slate.

Which belies the critical narrative that has haunted Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, even though it has Leonardo DiCaprio and no one outside of test audiences have seen it…

De Luca: We’re also mining the IP that we have available. Warners has an incredibly rich library, and we’ve been fortunate to have the franchises we have, and that’s an element of the diversified slate strategy. Empowering New Line to fire on all cylinders, getting animation relaunched and firing in all cylinders, this is also part of the diversified slate strategy. So we’re hoping to bring all that to bear and come with a full throated, eclectic slate mix that maximizes the potential of all three of our labels for Warners, New Line and animation. It is an incredible, very, very urgent priority to restore Warners as the shining city on a hill for filmmakers like Ryan and others, for sure.

Abdy: You have to look at the breadth of all the talent that is here, that has come here. Between Margot Robbie, who we’ve had great success with, with Timothee Chalamet, again, great success with him on Wonka and Dune. It’s the directors too. And the idea, like Mike was saying, is the whole slate has to be looked at: a mix of original films with great filmmakers like Paul and Ryan. And by the way Mike, it’s literally two out of 12 on the slate are [big original swings]. That is what I’m trying to say. That has gotten a little bit of disproportionate attention.

That’s the thing that’s not ever looked at. It is just two movies, but you have to look beyond that. We are also bringing the talent here, and making our wonderful library of films and our IP and our franchises available to that talent. So while you have talent here that wants to make their original films, they’re also working on some of the IP with us. And that is the sign of a healthy studio, a studio that is diversified and I think looks at the overall slate.

De Luca: What Pam mentioned is really important, our ability to now combine these talent relationships that we forged with the existing IP at the studio. That’s where real magic can happen, where you compare these filmmakers up with the existing IP within the studio walls is an incredible opportunity for all of us.

Abdy: That’s an advantage that other places don’t have.

De Luca: That’s what Alan and Jeff Robinov did with Chris Nolan and Dark Knight. So that’s part of the strategy as well as bringing all these great directors and actors here and parking them at the studio and making them part of the Warner’s family, because that’s where we can really build for years to come.

Are there specific examples where big talent has been matched with library IP?

De Luca: Yes. Drew Goddard, writing and directing The Matrix. Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and Jay Roach, with their Oceans Eleven prequel; Matt Reeves as producer, working with Marvel’s Werewolf By Night director Michael Giacchino on a remake of our library title Them; Andy Serkis directing Gollum. Others we can’t talk about yet.  

Abdy: Don’t forget Sandra Bullock and Nicole Kidman on Practical Magic…

Here’s the hard part of playing the long game with filmmaker relationships; not everything works. When Todd Phillips made the first installment of The Hangover, the studio wanted him to aim higher with his cast. He held fast and threw his fee in and became an investor of a film he made his way. That’s three films that grossed over $700 million globally. Phillips is in the same position with his radical vision of Joker and he again becomes an equity holder. It grosses over a billion and he probably made $200 million as his payoff for sharing risk on the Hangover and Joker. In the old Warner Brothers days, you could probably have said, well, listen, the guy’s gotten us this far and we’re playing on house money with him. Let him go make the movie. Is that an unrealistic viewpoint in this day in age? The big losses on Joker: Folie a Deux have been a relentless part of the negative narrative…

Abdy: We believe in being in business with filmmakers over the long term. Sometimes you have Minecraft, and sometimes you have Joker 2, but you can’t be so reactionary that either makes you change your strategy. And we really believe in ours.

De Luca: Yeah, totally. Did Warners cut bait on Clint Eastwood when Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil came out, or some others that didn’t connect? No, because they believed in the long game and the law of averages, and knew the Clint Eastwood balance sheet was going to be just fine. And we believe the same about Todd Phillips. First time we met Clint, he showed us a framed copy of his own script reader’s coverage of Unforgiven, urging him to pass. It’s framed and hangs over his desk. We found it very inspiring that he keeps it framed in his office.

Since I’m asking you to defend your regime, a pessimistic narrative cropped up about Minecraft, bestowing credit to Legendary, its producers and seemingly everyone but you, even though you green lit it and WB paid 75% of its budget. I can commiserate. I went from being obsessed with breaking every story I found at Variety and then Deadline for decades, and now as co-editor, I break plenty but take greater pleasure helping the younger people here boat the big fish. After all, I’m not going to be here forever. You would think the reaction to Minecraft would be, good to see Warner Bros come roaring back with a big win, in collaboration with its Dune partner Legendary. How do you feel about the credit grabbing narrative?

De Luca: Again, we have a veteran’s mentality, and pretty thick skin. It is nothing but a good news story to us. No matter what version of the story is written, there’s no bad news here. Everybody did their jobs, incredibly well. The project was here for 12 years, and had trouble getting made. I think Pam and I did our jobs well, recognizing that it should be fast tracked. I think Jesse Ehrman is an unsung hero here. That should be hung from the rafters, how he kept this thing alive for those 12 years, through multiple regimes. That is hard to do. He never didn’t believe in it, and he kept the faith. You could not ask for a better performance from a key executive and a champion of his project. And then the final puzzle piece was attaching Legendary, where Mary Parent and Cale Boyter brought it home by folding in Jared Hess and producing the result that we have. Everybody did their jobs. There are many things to celebrate, many people to celebrate. Pam and I will always credit everyone who contributes, including a recently reorganized marketing and distribution team. This was their maiden tentpole voyage, wiping out any doubt that we might miss a step in our ability to mount and deploy a global tentpole. There are heroes all through this story, and all of them should get the credit they deserve. It was a complete win for everyone involved.

Abdy: I also think, Mike, part of it is that some of these journalists don’t understand the process of movie making. They’re writing this snark and they don’t actually understand what goes into every step of the way. And like Mike said…

De Luca: To Pam’s point, it’s funny to read some of these accounts. Pam and I are in some tower, rubber stamping green lights. Every studio does a version of advocacy, from marketing to distribution. Signing up with numbers, models being looked at. None of it is a closed process. It doesn’t mean everyone doesn’t make mistakes every once in a while, but even the way they depict it, sometimes it is more fictional than what Seth Rogen is doing on The Studio right now. I know it is. There’s no resemblance to how decisions get made, validated, backed up by numbers that are given by multiple divisions.

Abdy: And the creative process. That’s the thing. When we got here, one of the first things we did was look at what is here. What could we identify quickly, IP that could be big movies? Two of them were Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, and Minecraft. Okay. Minecraft, the rights were about to lapse, we learned in one of our first meetings with producer Roy Lee. He talked to us about Minecraft, we dove into it, we read it. We got excited by it and recognized what Jesse Ehrman had been trying to do for years alongside Legendary. And then we all made the film. I just want to say like Mike is saying, we’re not sitting in some tower, rubber stamping stuff. Mike and I, we’re producers. We all creatively work together. We show up at every test screening. We read every script. We’re in the cutting room. We do everything collaboratively with our filmmakers and with our producers. Filmmaking is not a singular achievement by one person. It is an achievement by many people, and everybody deserves to get applauded when something works and when it doesn’t work, that happens too. You can’t blame Mike and I for Joker 2, and then not give us credit for Minecraft at the same time.

De Luca: I don’t think you can really look at any studio just through the lens of how a singular movie performs. Because the same thinking that went into green lighting Mickey 17 also went into green lighting Barbie and Wonka. And the same thinking that went into green lighting Beetlejuice and Minecraft went into Green lighting Joker 2. Everyone is going to have hits and misses. Everyone has misses. Not everyone has hits. You have to look at the totality of a slate’s performance when you’re looking at executives and filmmakers, and then over a sufficient period of time, the aggregate. Are you in the black? Are you in the red? We’re more long-term thinkers that way.

It looks like Mike’s old haunt, New Line, is ripe to have a moment. Despite years of speculation the division could be shuttered or down-stepped, Richard Brener has run a ship with steadily profitable genre films, and they’ve got several this year starting with Final Destination: Bloodlines on May 16. I don’t know if Brener’s “See you at the Oscars” boast after he showed the trailer at CinemaCon will come true for that film, but it should be another much needed W for your studio, with the Zach Cregger-directed Weapons, Mortal Kombat II, and The Conjuring: Last Rites coming on its heels…

De Luca: Well, look, I’m biased here. I don’t exist in this business without New Line, and I love that it’s an incredibly important part of our business. I think Richard is a once in a generation piece of executive talent, who has steered that label over decades. He doubled my tenure: I was there 16 years, and Rich is coming up on year 30. And it’s an incredibly important part of our label strategy, our diversified slate strategy. I think New Line is on the verge of having real brand awareness with the audience in a way that carries public trust and credibility that they’re going to enjoy what they’re getting from New Line.

We were so proud to see Richard unveil his slate at CinemaCon. We’ve seen all the movies, they’re spectacular. They’ll test through the roof, and he’s got a very steady hand on that till, and it’s a really important part of our growth strategy. And I think it is always going to be a great door to bring material to the studio, certain kinds of material, and we just want to see it kind get the TLC it needs and continue to grow.

Abdy: Yeah, Richard’s great. I mean, one of the first things when we sat down when we got here…Mike and Richard have such a long relationship but Richard and I go back to the good old days, the ‘90s New Line era, which was super fun back then. He leans into genre and they know it better than anybody. They know how to serve their audience. And Richard is so smart about, and Dave Neustadter and the team there, they’re so smart about creating these franchises from the ground up, creating new horror franchises and really leaning into what their audience wants. I was so excited at CinemaCon for Richard to get on stage and really show what he’s doing.

De Luca: By the way, Zach Cregger is another filmmaker… we hope to recover him after his upcoming adventure at Sony [he’ll be paid $20M to resurrect Resident Evil], because he is a huge emerging talent. I mean. Coming off Barbarian in terms of being one of these writer directors that dream up commercial originals, I think he’s worth his weight in gold as well.

How about Superman? I recall you started that one before James Gunn and Peter Safran became heads of DC…

De Luca: Yes, we hired James in secret to start his Superman script before they took the job.

The CinemaCon trailer generated a lot of back and forth. And when’s the next Batman with Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson?

De Luca: I love Superman. I think James Gunn has crushed it. It’s got tons of his trademark heart and humor and the action is jaw dropping. It’s the Superman I grew up with, so I get choked up when I watch it. I think it’s so epic and visually arresting and emotional. The performances are great. It is a five-star movie to me, and I can’t wait for the world to see it. Yeah, we’re really excited about Superman, James crushed it.

A closer cousin to the Richard Donner-directed originals with Christopher Reeve?

De Luca: I would say in spirit, it is closer to that, but it’s also a big hunk of epic sci-fi. It has a little bit of what I loved about Guardians of the Galaxy, but it’s true-blue Superman. The conflict sources that he uses for inspiration, All-Star Superman and the like are in there, too. It is really a love letter to what has made Superman endure for almost a hundred years. He managed to get it all in there.

Abdy: We’re not in the weeds on the Batman stuff. It’s really James and Peter Safran who run DC. We have a bit of other collaboration with Matt Reeves, but Peter and James know he is a writer/directing auteur in his own right, and that it will come when he’s written his best Batman script and is ready.

You’ve empowered an animation division. Family film is always a staple of a successful studio. What is the big challenge about a world with little patience, and leaning into films that can take years between conception and release?

De Luca: Well, it was a no brainer. If you look around at theatrical landscape coming out of the pandemic, what remained of a robust theater going audience, clearly the family and kids audience at the top. So animated films, both originals and IP adaptation, it was a giant priority for us to reaffirm Warners commitment to an animated label. For whatever reason, it had kind of had fallen to fits and starts over the last decade. They would announce something, it would work for a little bit and then fall by the wayside. We doubled down on making that commitment and starting things. For us it starts with the right executive casting, like Peter and James at DC, and Bill Damaschke in animation. Finding Bill was a big missing piece of the puzzle that allowed us to hit the ground running as quickly as humanly possible. You have to have patience; it’s not as quick as live action development and production and your commitment has to be unwavering. We were willing to make that commitment with Bill as the right guy.

Just like with Brener, we were so proud of Bill when he kind of gave people a sneak peek at Cat in the Hat at CinemaCon. It has tested through the roof for us, even in its roughest form. We’re excited for that to come out next year, and it reinforced to us that it was an obvious move to access one of the most robust theatrical moviegoing demos available to a studio. It also continues a great Warners tradition of really original and unique animated feature films, whether it’s The Lego Movie or Happy Feet or The Iron Giant. This studio has come with ones that operate in their own lane of creativity and a singular devotion to innovation. And we wanted to continue that and to see that grow here. And we think we have that with Bill.

Abdy: Bill’s terrific. Two years that he’s been here, we’ve been able to green light four movies already, a real mix of originals and IP and also Warner’s IP that we’re developing alongside it. The goal for us is to get two animated films a year. We’re making, Oh, The Places You’ll Go with John Chu, and I want to see it tomorrow because it’s just so amazing and delightful. But that’s the biggest challenge of animation. One of the favorite parts of our day comes when we’re working on those films.

It must be difficult to be patient and play the long game in long gestation arenas like animation when you read reports that Zaslav is interviewing your replacements. It has to test the thickness of the bark you both have on your hides. Warner Bros doesn’t have to make a decision until January if your contracts will be renewed past their summer 2026 expiration dates. Can you give the Hollywood community that reads all these headlines, and Deadline, a sense of how you are feeling about all this, and your level of confidence you’ll be there for the long term?

De Luca: Honestly, we think it’s an honor to serve at Warner Brothers. It’s a studio we’ve always held in the highest esteem. If you love movies, it’s a dream job. So, we’re really enjoying it. We serve at the pleasure of the leadership of WBD, and we just don’t really focus on things we can’t control. We think we’re working well as a team with the rest of the company, and we’re excited about the slate going forward. We don’t really dwell on things that are outside our control. We just dwell on trying to do the best job we can for the company day to day, with the challenging landscape we find ourselves in. I mean, what theatrical audiences want, how to choose which projects have theater worthy criteria. It’s a full-time job. It keeps us busy. So we just try to focus on the task at hand and just try to ignore this stuff. It’s really out of our control.

Abdy: It’s about the work. Mike. Like Mike said, it’s a full-time job, just to oversee the movies, read the scripts, work with the filmmakers, oversee marketing and distribution, make sure we’re delivering for our audiences around the world. We are excited. This is a dream job. I remember being a kid when I moved here 30 years ago, living in the Oakwoods, and seeing the Warner Brothers water tower and just dreaming of making movies here one day. We serve at the leadership like Mike said, but how can you not feel like it’s a dream? We’re excited about the slate and all we can do is work on the movies and make them the best we can.

De Luca: We’re very grateful that we’ve had the amount of success we’ve had so far, really just two and a half years on the job. To have two franchises emerge from our leadership team with Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and Minecraft, I feel like we’re ahead of schedule. Now we’re trying to step on the gas, to double, to quadruple that kind of success.

I mentioned getting a new version of The Bodyguard underway. Are you already developing sequels for both Minecraft and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice?

De Luca: Imminently. The ink might not be dry on the deals yet, but imminently.

Abdy: Adding to things we’re excited about, Andy Serkis doing the Gollum film, Drew Goddard writing a new Matrix. We’re super excited about Amblin developing with Chris Columbus, new entries in the Gremlins and Goonies franchises. We just had a dynamite check-n with Philippa Boyens on Gollum, and I think we’re about to get that script in May. Cat in the Hat and the second Dr. Seuss adaptation Jon M. Chu is co-directing…there’s really great stuff on the horizon.

Last one. You parted company with marketing chief Josh Goldstine, and international distribution chief Andrew Cripps, at a time Minecraft and Sinners were building awareness. People were surprised. How quickly will you bring in replacements?

De Luca: We think we have everything we need to pull off a success like Minecraft, globally. I think it was proof of concept that the changes we’ve made and the desire on our part to refashion global distribution and global marketing to fit the 21st century were appropriate. I think we haven’t missed a step. We’re so proud of the performance of the new configuration and the people we promoted. They executed Minecraft flawlessly and we’re really excited about the future with the team we have.