Warner Bros Film Chiefs De Luca and Abdy Out as Paramount Pair Take Over
Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy are out as the co-heads of Warner Bros. films after running the studio since 2022.
Paramount Pictures co-chairs Josh Greenstein and Dana Goldberg will take control of both film divisions, according to The Hollywood Reporter on 2 October 2026. A co-head job means two people share the top post. Here it meant joint charge of the cinema business, from deciding which films get made to how they are sold to cinemas.
De Luca and Abdy learned they were losing their jobs just before a Puck report broke the news late on Thursday, 1 October, the Reporter said. De Luca had been hearing for more than a month that he and Abdy were at risk. He rang Greenstein to confront him about the rumour, and Greenstein denied it and blamed a bad game of telephone.
The pair had met with David Ellison months earlier and came away believing Ellison had indicated they would stay on after a merger, according to the same report. That understanding did not hold. Greenstein is described in the report as co-chair of Paramount Pictures, with Goldberg as his co-chief, and the two are now set to run the Warner Bros. film operation as well.
De Luca and Abdy were former MGM film executives before Warner Bros. Discovery named them co-chairpersons and chief executives of the Warner Bros. Pictures Group in June 2022, according to Warner Bros. Discovery. Company listings describe their brief as oversight of global theatre production, marketing and distribution across the studio organisation. They received an early renewal of a multi-year deal as co-chairs and chief executives of the Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group in October 2025, as reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
Their run included the cinema releases Sinners and Weapons and a best picture win for One Battle After Another. In June 2026, the two were announced as the first keynote speakers for the Toronto Film Festival's TIFF: The Market event, a sign of how central they were to industry talk about buying and selling films. Other outlets quickly followed the exit news, with Variety reporting that their term was coming to an end and IndieWire reporting that the De Luca and Abdy era was over.
De Luca and Abdy have told associates they could go to Netflix next, the Reporter said. De Luca grew close to Netflix executive Ted Sarandos during conversations late last year when Netflix was tipped to buy Warner Bros. Netflix is giving its longest cinema run ever to its Cannes acquisition La Bola Negra, a theatrical window being the gap between play in cinemas and arrival on streaming.
What makes this stand out is the contrast between recent success on screen and a swift change at the top. For fans, this means new people will soon decide which stories get big cinema releases and when they arrive.
