If you haven’t been following the big entertainment/business news of the week, AT&T has officially got the green light to merge with Time Warner. That means that AT&T boss John Stankey is now in the business of entertainment, in a big way. So, as you might expect, the executive is currently looking over the new assets and seeing what’s what. One of those franchises that seems to be of the utmost importance is DC films. And according to Stankey, things over at DC are in a good place right now.
“First of all, I think the performance [of DC movies] over the past year and a half is trending the right direction in terms of the quality of the product and how the franchise is being managed. So hats off to Kevin [Tsujihara] and the team around getting the momentum headed the right direction,” said Stankey in a new interview with THR.
As we’ve covered over the last week, there’s been a lot of changes happening over at DC. Diane Nelson, who’s overseen the brand for almost two decades has stepped aside, as has Geoff Johns, who is leaving his executive label to just embrace the creative side of the business. But for the AT&T executive, this is all signs of good things to come.
READ MORE: Geoff Johns Stepping Down As DC Films Exec And Instead Will Write ‘Green Lantern Corps’
“And I believe, as you sit here today and we start to think about what the new value proposition is for a combined Warner Media and AT&T, we obviously want to go to creatives and talk about what we can do with our platforms now that are different than what a stand-alone Time Warner could do prior to the transaction. That’s a unique opportunity, and I want to make sure I can help Kevin sell that and get the right amount of talent in here to elevate the franchise to a new level,” he continued.
So, will the new WarnerMedia be able to attract higher-profile talent with their new merger? Who knows? But it doesn’t appear that Stankey is worried about DC’s future in the film industry. Guess we’ll see what happens when “Aquaman” and “Shazam” hit theaters then.