Endless Pursuit of Profit Kills Progress

Ever since David Zaslav took over HBO Max — and long before its painfully boring rebrand — I’ve quietly mourned the death of what I once considered to be the greatest streaming platform of all time. I’ve also been quietly seething over my deep disdain for this guy. To call Zaslav one of my least favorite people I’ve never met is an understatement of the year. He didn’t just hack up HBO Max, slash jobs right and left, and get rid of an animated gem like Summer Camp Island before its completion. He sacked the highly anticipated (and largely finished) <a href="https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/movies/a40794876/batgirl-hbo-movie-cancelled/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Batgirl movie</a>, too. There's more, but surely, you get the picture. As subscribers tried to cope with multiple uninspired brand updates from HBO Max (now simply Max), Zaslav swung his now-infamous ax over to Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Messing with TCM didn’t go over too well with some of the biggest and most respected names in filmmaking, including Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese. But Zaslav, of course, had <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/zaslav-reverses-tcm-changes-1235525256/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">already made his usual budget cuts</a> — he axed more humans and programming while proclaiming his love for the channel and promised to preserve its legacy. Then, he gutted TCM’s permanent building filled with archival movie posters and photographs, moving what little people remained into a few different sterile, non-committal groups of cubicles. Keep in mind that David Zaslav has been paid close to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/01/top-hollywood-exec-made-498-million-in-5-years-while-writer-pay-fell.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">$500M</a> in a span of five years. The actual writers behind all of that content earned far less with each year, but this one man reaped the financial rewards of crushing countless creative dreams in favor of more… reality TV. <a href="https://aninjusticemag.com/endless-pursuit-of-profit-kills-progress-993781cc5307">Click Here</a>