Leave it to Warner Bros. Discovery to brag that it saved $100 million due to the strikes

David Zaslav’s run as the head of Warner Bros. Discovery has seemingly been driven by one guiding principal: Art is bad and money is good. Blame for the recent trend of studios deleting original content from their streaming services to save money can be placed directly at his feet, as can the dopey HBO Max rebrand and the dilution of the priceless HBO label with trashy Discovery reality show stuff. Plus, as the CEO of WBD, he’s part of the AMPTP—the organization that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are currently striking against—meaning he’s partially responsible for the shutdown of the whole entertainment industry.

So it’s not particularly surprising that Warner Bros. Discovery thought it was a good idea to frame its Q2 earnings report—where the company lost $1.24 billion, via Variety, which is up from losing $3.42 billion at this time last year—with the following silver lining: They saved $100 million thanks to the strikes! And it’s only going to get better if the strikes go on through the end of the year! Since they’re not spending money making anything or paying the artists who make it for them, any cash that’s coming in can be used for other things, which is… good?

It’s lousy optics, especially coming from this company, but Zaslav did at least hop onto the earnings call (as reported by Variety) to repeatedly insist that WBD is “in the business of storytelling” and that they can’t do that “without the writers, directors, editors, producers, actors, the whole below-the-line crew.” He also added that it’s the company’s job “to enable and empower them to do their best work” and that he hopes “these strikes get resolved in a way that the writers and actors feel they are fairly compensated and their efforts and contributions are fully valued.” Oddly, Variety doesn’t say whether or not Zaslav was wearing a hot dog suit or driving a hot dog car while saying that.