{"id":668635,"date":"2026-05-13T17:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668635\/"},"modified":"2026-05-13T17:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T17:25:09","slug":"inside-warner-bros-discoverys-upfront-the-ellison-in-the-room","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/668635\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside Warner Bros. Discovery’s Upfront: the ‘Ellison in the Room’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery<\/a> opened its annual upfronts<\/a> presentation to advertisers Wednesday with a tribute to the late, great Ted Turner led by CNN\u2019s Anderson Cooper<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tFollowing a sizzle promoting every modern WBD property from James Gunn\u2019s new \u201cSuperman\u201d movie to HBO<\/a>\u2018s upcoming \u201cHarry Potter\u201d TV series, WBD\u2019s presidents of U.S. advertising Ryan Gould\u00a0and\u00a0Bobby Voltaggio took the stage to welcome the audience and promise to try to keep this presentation to an hour-long runtime. Then they brought up the \u201cEllison in the room,\u201d in reference to Paramount Skydance\u2019s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery: <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cListen, we don\u2019t deflect,\u201d Gould said. \u201cThat\u2019s not who we are. Everyone here knows that there\u2019s change ahead and that there\u2019s change in our company, but there\u2019s change across the entire media industry, and we\u2019re well aware that your business is changing, but we believe that success is a team effort. So our best in class organization, the team and people you know and trust so well, are here to help guide you through this transition. We\u2019ve been through change and challenges before. We don\u2019t flinch. We meet the moment and continue to push forward in your best interest. There is one thing that is not changing, and that\u2019s our world class content portfolio, the passionate connections that fans have to our stories, our worlds and moments, and the fact that it all remains only available to you.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHeated Rivalry<\/a>\u201d cast members Fran\u00e7ois Arnaud and Robbie Graham-Kuntz came in to talk about the craze surrounding the HBO hockey romance series abd tee up the real-life sports rivalries covered by the TNT Sports team. This athletic celebration ended with Shaquille O\u2019Neal acting as bandleader for a marching band plastered with WBD\u2019s Bleacher Report logo.<\/p>\n

\n\tLeslie Jones arrived to tease her new HGTV show, \u201cRoast My Rental,\u201d and then roast the number of cable channels with initials in the title that Warner Bros. is home to.<\/p>\n

\n\tWBD chief marketing officer Karen Bronzo spoke about the company\u2019s efforts to engage the TikTok generation particularly through partnering with popular content creators for food programming, like Nick Digiovanni. Terry Crews came out to talk about his partnership with Digiovanni for new Food Network series, \u201c100 Cooks.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Cooper returned to the stage, this time with his CNN colleagues, to promote a lineup of CNN original series, including \u201cVariety\u2019s Actor on Actors,\u201d and introduce comedian Craig Ferguson. Ferguson cracked a few jokes about his Kennedy-esque hair and Cooper\u2019s glorious Vanderbilt locks before sharing a look at his new CNN show, \u201cAmerican on Purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe presentation shifted to focus on Warner Bros. films lineup with a behind-the-scenes look at the start of filming on \u201cA Minecraft Movie 2\u201d in New Zealand and a teaser for M. Night Shyamalan\u2019s \u201cRemain,\u201d cued up by the director himself. <\/p>\n

\n\tVoltaggio and Gould returned to the stage to highlight some of their new latest ad tech offerings and spreading those options over not just HBO Max, but for Discovery+ and CNN\u2019s streaming platform, as well.<\/p>\n

\n\tThen it was HBO and HBO Max\u2019s turn, with \u201cThe Pitt\u201d stars Noah Wyle and Katherine LaNasa (who gave the audience her best, \u201cBaby Jane Doe!\u201d) appearing to hype up Season 3 of the wildly popular medical drama. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe power of HBO carried us through the end of the show, with more references to the upcoming \u201cHarry Potter\u201d TV series than we can count, a teaser for \u201cBig Bag Theory\u201d spinoff \u201cStuart Fails to Save the Universe,\u201d<\/a> first-look images from the upcoming fourth season of \u201cThe White Lotus,\u201d and a behind-the-scenes video for \u201cThe Gilded Age\u201d Season 4, which was introduced by the Railroad Daddy himself, Morgan Spector.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter one more look-ahead sizzle reminding the audience about the power of WBD\u2019s IP, the show ended at just about 10 minutes over the hour mark. And based on the quick movements of the audience, they were pleased that Voltaggio and Gould stuck to their promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Discovery opened its annual upfronts presentation to advertisers Wednesday with a tribute to the late, great…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":668636,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,20552,134,9054,187023,427,72409,6142],"class_list":["post-668635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-david-ellison","tag-entertainment","tag-hbo","tag-heated-rivalry","tag-tv","tag-upfronts","tag-warner-bros-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=668635"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/668635\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/668636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=668635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=668635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=668635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}