Warner Bros Discovery said scrapping content could cost over £2bn
Warner Bros Discovery said that charges associated with cutting content could reach $2.5bn (£2.2bn), as the media giant continues down its cost-saving path.
According to a security filing posted on Monday, the merged firm said restructuring costs could total up to $4.3bn through 2024, including between $2bn and $2.5bn in “strategic content programming assessments”.
It also said that “organisation costs”, such as layoffs and relocations, could set the company back anywhere between $800m and £1.1bn.
It comes after AT&T’s WarnerMedia unit and Discovery completed their ambitious tie-up in April to form Warner Bros Discovery.
Since this agreement, chief executive David Zaslav has promised investors he would realise $3bn in post-merger savings, culling a number of high-profile projects in the past year, including near-completed blockbuster Batgirl and Aquaman: King of Atlantis.
The media titan has also shut down a long-awaited CNN+ streaming news service less than a month after it launched, and laid out a strategy to merge the HBO Max streaming service with Discovery.
Warner Bros Discovery shares are down nearly 50 per cent in the year to date.
The firm is due to release its third-quarter results on 3 November.