Talk about karma.
Less than two years after Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy showed him the door at Warner Bros., Josh Goldstine is coming back. David Ellison has hired the veteran marketer to oversee theatrical marketing and distribution for all of Skydance, meaning Warner Bros., Paramount Pictures and any labels to come.
Goldstine probably feels like this is poetic justice. He was abruptly let go in January 2025 after four years at Warners, and he took the fall for a rough 2024. That year gave us two very expensive misfires: "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga" and "Joker: Folie à Deux." Never mind that the same marketing team also delivered "Dune: Part Two," "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" and "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," all hits. Someone had to be blamed, and it was Goldstine.
Ellison clearly didn't buy that narrative, and now, with the Warner Bros. deal officially closed as of Tuesday, Goldstine's purview has more than doubled.
The rest of the Skydance leadership chart came together a day earlier. Mattel's Ynon Kreiz is co-CEO alongside Ellison. George Cheeks and Casey Bloys are co-chairs and chief content officers on the TV side, with JB Perrette, formerly WBD's streaming and games chief, as co-chair and chief business officer of Skydance TV and DTC. Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg now co-chair the Skydance Motion Picture Group, overseeing both Warners and Paramount, while James Gunn and Peter Safran stay put atop DC Studios.
And De Luca and Abdy? Gone. I'll have a piece about them going up later today. Say what you will about their flop-infected tenure at Warner Bros., but for three years, they made us feel like it was the '70s again by greenlighting plenty of $100M+ auteur-driven projects.
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