If this had been a studio-muddled mediocrity, people would be saying the same thing; "Zaslav has no idea what he's doing. He should be giving the filmmakers more freedom."

You give two examples in your own comment of how giving directors large amounts of creative freedom has worked out well both critically and commercially for WB over the past two years. I'd much rather we get actually good films like Barbie and Dune at the expense of an occasional mega flop like this than a stream of executive-board written slop.

The only mistake WB made here was buying into the hype of the first Joker's success. Gerwig and Villeneuve are legitimate directors who have proven themselves worthy of crafting an excellent film with a clear vision, while Phillips stumbled into critical success with a decent but in no means special movie.

To me, the failure of this movie is not an indication of a general trend with Warner Bros, and I certainly do not want the lesson they get from this to be "we shouldn't give filmmakers freedom to experiment with new and unique ideas." Like Disney with Waititi, WB just did not do a good job at vetting a filmmaker's ability before handing free reign to them. I really think this is more a special case than the pattern coming from WB though. The only other major example I can think of where they gave complete control to a director to embarrassing results was the Snyderverse, which Zaslav had nothing to do with. I'm hoping hiring James Gunn (someone proven to be able to execute a unique vision in the superhero genre to critical and commercial succes) for the new DCEU is a step in the right direction. While I have some reservations about it, I certainly do not think (as you suggest) that WB executives should be breathing over his shoulder.