Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy Under Fire at Warner Bros. Amid Box Office Flops: ‘We Didn’t Want to Fail’ David Zaslav (EXCLUSIVE)

“Morning, guys,” said Michael De Luca in 2023, from the stage of the Colosseum at Caesars Palace Las Vegas. “We’ll try to keep this job for more than two years.”He chuckled to himself. At the time, De Luca was rehearsing to an empty house at CinemaCon, the annual convention of movie theater owners, beside his longtime friend and Warner Bros. Pictures co-head Pamela Abdy. The duo had just taken the helm of the storied Hollywood studio – home to everything from “The Jazz Singer” to all eight movie installments of “Harry Potter.” De Luca told the joke to acknowledge how swiftly he and Abdy had just vacated their jobs as heads of MGM’s film division for the chance to run 102-year-old Warners.His zinger didn’t wind up in the final presentation. Fast forward another two years, and no one at Warner Bros. is laughing even a little.Under De Luca and Abdy’s watch, yes, Warner Bros. had 2023’s monster hit “Barbie,” which was technically greenlit under the regime of their predecessor Toby Emmerich...