Tatiana Siegel has a new report up at Page Six Hollywood, and her sources claim the Skydance heads now running Warner Bros. opened up the books on the Michael De Luca–Pamela Abdy era and were horrified.
Abdy and De Luca's 2026 slate is expected to lose more than $800M. "Digger" alone is reportedly a $250M write-off. "The Bride" is in the red by more than $100M. "Supergirl" losses are in the $200M range.
Sources call the spending "beyond reckless." And 2027 might be worse. According to the report, De Luca and Abdy quietly shuffled their "problem children" into 2027, and Skydance is now stuck with all of them.
The one that has everyone scratching their heads is Sam Esmail's "Panic Carefully," a psychological thriller starring Julia Roberts, Elizabeth Olsen, Eddie Redmayne and Brian Tyree Henry. The film cost an astounding $160M, and it opens April 9. Plot details have been kept under wraps, but it's being touted as a "paranoid thriller" in the vein of "The Silence of the Lambs." It involves a masked, Joker-like cyberterrorist who plots to dismantle the global economy. Olsen has an experimental idea for unmasking him and needs Roberts' expertise to pull it off. Redmayne plays an imprisoned, Hannibal Lecter–like figure who holds the key to the criminal's identity.
"Panic Carefully" shot in January 2025 and has been in post-production since mid-2025. Given that timeline, most of us thought Esmail's film might come out this year, but that never happened. It recently had its release delayed from February to April 2026.
Then there's Nancy Meyers' "Paris Paramount," the most expensive romantic comedy ever made, with a budget of $120M and starring Penélope Cruz, Kieran Culkin and Jude Law. We've been tracking this one for a while. A few weeks ago, I reported that the four-month Los Angeles shoot, which had just wrapped, was by all accounts a nightmare. Puck reported that Meyers had racked up a number of complaints for berating her staff, and that the budget was already ballooning well past $120M. Warners has it dated for Christmas Day 2027.
JJ Abrams' "The Great Beyond" was originally dated for November 13, 2026, before being bumped to 2027. The official spin was that it tested so well it deserved an IMAX rollout. Now sources say the movie wasn't testing well at all just four months out from release.
All this to say, Dan Lin suddenly looks like a genius. He was just pushed out as Netflix's film chief, but he passed on "Digger," "The Bride" and "Paris Paramount." All three. That's a hell of a track record.
Now this is a package. Armando Iannucci will write and direct a new film headed to the market, with James McAvoy, Alicia Vikander and Taron Egerton set to star. None of the three has worked with Iannucci before.