Warner Bros Discovery Upfront: Here’s What Happened In Madison Square Garden With Casey Bloys, Shaquille O’Neal & Conan O’Brien

Lynette Rice
·4 min read
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Mindy Kaling got right to the point at the top of the Warner Bros Discovery presentation Wednesday by joking how her show The Sex Lives of College Girls is “filled with smoking hot guys who run around campus topless.”

“It’s a Max show, not a BBC show,” she said.

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Sexy! Here’s what else happened at the WBD shindig at Madison Square Garden.

-Paul W. Downs and Hannah Einbinder of Hacks to trade barbs before teasing the third season of their sick-with-Emmys comedy starring Jean Smart. Einbinder also promotes her upcoming June 13 comedy special.

-HBO chief Casey Bloys tees up the season 2 trailer of House of the Dragon that dropped yesterday. The next Game of Thrones spinoff, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, has started production and will premiere in 2025. Other upcoming premieres: Hard Knocks: Off Season with the New York Giants in July; Sam Mendes’ The Franchise in the fall, and Dune: Prophecy the series at the end of the year. Other updates: White Lotus returns in 2025, along with The Last of Us in the “first half of the year” and The Pit from ER mastermind John Wells starring ER‘s Noah Wyle.

-Sarah Jessica Parker joins Bloys on stage to address the next season of And Just Like That. “Michael Patrick King has conjured and continues to create really exciting surprising heartbreaking challenging interesting storylines certainly for me and we hope for the audience,” she said. “He and his extraordinary writers have been really thoughtful about what are these emotional travels. The combination of great writing and wonderful actors and this city — initially the fifth character — is now the 10th character.”

What if Carrie from And Just Like That met Carrie from Sex and the City? What would she say? “I would say don’t have an affair with Big. Don’t lose Aiden’s dog. And get a financial planner,” quipped Parker. “And then I probably would be reticent to do so because despite the shortcomings, she is also a really decent person in a lot of ways. It would have been far less interesting to play if she were a wonderfully reliable, constantly good person.”

-Chief U.S. Advertising Sales Officer Jon Steinlauf crows about how much “valuable” IP that the company owns. “We also have tentpoles and franchises that drive global fandom … it’s a wealth of potential and we are unlocking it for you.” He also claims Max subscriber base has doubled. In the first quarter of 2024, he said, WBD had all the top 5 entertainment networks in primetime. He also coined a new phrase The WBD Effect and how “their stories go beyond the screen” to drive culture. Lots of talk follows about how the company maximized the crap out of Barbie to earn much-needed cash.

-After an awkward intro by Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty, Chairman and CEO of US Networks Kathleen Finch gloated about the company’s unscripted content, how it appeals to a broad audience, and how WBD draws “the biggest collective audience in cable.” Cue: requisite montage of the WBD unscripted fare. She promises a new true-crime series from Jessica Biel, and how Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which Dan Schneider is now suing over, was Max’s biggest ever series.

-CNN presentation follows featuring news talent like Anderson Cooper and Jake Tapper. “We are here to bring the truth to light,” added Christine Amanpour via video. CNN CEO Mark Thompson joins the discussion to say how the world “needs the truth more than ever. No news brand on earth is in a better place to deliver all of those things than CNN.” Their plan is to double down on news on the all-news channel. Groundbreaking! He also said the presidential debate is on. “When people have something important to say, they say it on CNN,” he added. He’s also making a U.S. version of the UK hit Have I Got News For You.

-TNT sports presentation follows featuring Taylor Rooks. Wayne Gretzky is on stage with Dale Earnhardt Jr, Micah Parsons and Charles Barkley, who says “we are not saving the fuckin’ world. It’s just basketball.” He also added he doesn’t miss Shaq.

-Shaquille O’Neal and Conan O’ Brien close out presentation with the best exchange of the morning. O’Brien quips that O’Neal doesn’t know who he is. “You thought I was Larry Bird’s sister,” complains O’Brien.

“More like Larry Bird’s mom,” replies O’Neal, who goes on to bring down the house by saying, “I’m here because I love ad sales. I’m the living proof of the WBD Effect.”

“We had to be here. You chose to be here,” O’Brien tells the crowd. “That’s on you. None of the statistics given today are real.”

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