Warner Bros. released its financial report for Q1 2024 today, showing how well the company fared in the first quarter, and due to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, it has taken losses.
During the financial presentation, Warner Bros. CEO and President David Zaslav unleashed how well the company did (performance-wise) when compared to the previous year, and due to the flop of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League mixed with how well Hogwarts Legacy sold numbers-wise last year, Warner Bros. took a pretty substantial hit from that singular release.
Zaslav said, “We are pleased with our progress in the first quarter, evidenced by strong results in important KPIs. We delivered meaningful growth in our streaming business with a nice acceleration in ad sales, generating nearly $90 million in positive EBITDA for the quarter,” which means although Suicide Squad did incredibly poorly, Warner Bros. still had an overall positive quarter, citing “total revenues were $9,958 million.”
However, this is based on the negative report that the Suicide Squad received. Suicide Squad was launched with negative feedback from fans and critics alike, and a massive game completion bug was launched with the title, which didn’t help matters much. The report states, “Q1 total Adjusted EBITDA was $2,102 million, a 20% ex-FX decrease compared to the prior year quarter, primarily driven by the success of Hogwarts Legacy in the prior year quarter while Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League generated significantly lower revenues in the current year quarter” attributing heavy losses to how poorly Suicide Squad performed.
Warner Bros. Discovery CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels echoed this sentiment in a follow-up investor-based call, stating, “The $400 million+ year-over-year decline during Q1 was primarily due to the very tough comp we faced in games against the success of Hogwarts Legacy last year in the first quarter, in conjunction with the disappointing Suicide Squad release this past quarter, which we impaired, leading to a $200 million impact to EBITDA during the first quarter,” which attributes the negative losses directly with not just how poorly the latest Rocksteady release sold, but just how well Hogwart’s Legacy sold the year prior.
While Warner Bros. Discovery reported net profitability, with nearly $10 billion in net revenues, they’re still recovering from the loss Suicide Squad cost them. Fans can check out the financial report themselves for more information.
