How Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy Shaped Warner Bros.’ Oscars Glory

Hollywood history is filled with stories of studio moguls with roller-coaster careers, but none have had a journey quite like Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.

The duo, known to everyone as “Mike and Pam,” met in the 1990s at the outset of their careers as producers and execs; became friends, remained in touch and ultimately teamed up in 2020 to run MGM; and since 2022 have served as co-chairs and co-CEOs of Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, which encompasses Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Pictures Animation. On March 30, 2025, following a string of costly flops for Warners, including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Joker: Folie à Deux, Bloomberg reported that their boss, Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, was interviewing potential replacements for them. But less than a week later, their studio began a turnaround for the ages.

Indeed, in 2025, with a slate of 11 films — among them A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Superman, Weapons and One Battle After Another — they had nine open atop the domestic box office, seven in a row of which grossed more than $40 million, a record. Their films occupied the top box office spot for 15 weeks domestically and 16 weeks globally, accounted for three spots on the list of the year’s 10 highest-grossing films and collectively took in more than $4 billion worldwide. And earlier this year, those films garnered 30 Oscar nominations — tying the studio’s all-time record — on the back of 16 noms for Sinners, which shattered the record for a single film; 13 for One Battle After Another, now the best picture frontrunner; and another for Weapons.

During a recent interview in front of film students at Chapman University, which was also recorded for The Hollywood Reporter’s Awards Chatter podcast, De Luca, 60, and Abdy, 52 — who, far from being fired, recently had their contracts re-upped — candidly discussed their Hollywood paths, separate and together; their remarkable 2025; and what it’s been like, at the moment of their greatest success, knowing that their studio was at the center of a tug-of-war between Netflix and Paramount.

(The recent emergence of Paramount as victor has prompted yet more speculation over their job security, but, as ever, they remain unflappable, telling THR, “This deal will follow the normal regulatory path that governs all M&A. Throughout this process, our North Star does not waver — we remain committed to bringing exceptional films to theaters.”)

Pam, one of your first jobs was working as Danny DeVito’s assistant back when he was directing and producing a lot via Jersey Films. What did you take from that?

PAM ABDY I got to be on set all the time on The Rainmaker and L.A. Confidential. And when he was studying his lines, I would run around and hang with the line producer, hang with the ADs, hang with the DP, hang with the costume department and literally try to absorb.

You rose through the ranks at Jersey Films. How did that chapter come to an end?

ABDY It was the day I was leaving to go produce Garden State. It was a small movie, $2.5 million budget. I was moving in with my parents because we didn’t have enough money for me to have a hotel room and a car. And Danny, Michael [Shamberg] and Stacey [Sher] said that they were splitting up the company. I was 28 years old, I’d just gotten my first house, and I had no job now. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

You then became an exec at Paramount. Part of your job today is to advocate for filmmakers. What’s an early example of that?

ABDY I’d been advocating to get [2006’s] Babel made. I called [Paramount boss Brad Grey]. “Hi, we haven’t met. I’m an SVP here. Can I have your address so I can messenger the script to you?” And he goes, “What do you think of it?” And I just said to myself, “Fuck it, he’s going to fire me or not.” I said, “It’s not obvious on paper, but here’s why we need to make it: This guy is the real deal.” It started my 20-plus-years-long relationship with Alejandro G. Iñárritu. And we’re making his next film, [Digger, starring Tom Cruise], which comes out this year.

Mike, at 19 you got an internship at New Line in New York. What did you find when you arrived?

MIKE DE LUCA I thought, “Well, this was a big mistake. It looks like they financed porno films here.” It was barely an office. It was a really small operation. And then I got to know all the people, and they were all film enthusiasts and lovers of movies.

Long before Sinners, you were criticized for giving big deals. That goes all the way back to Jim Carrey in the ’90s?

DE LUCA Nothing’s changed. They were mean in the ’90s, they’re mean now. We paid Jim Carrey nothing for The Mask; I think he got a quarter of a million dollars. It was testing well, and everyone in town knew it, so Jim was getting offers of $2, $3, $4 million before The Mask came out. And then Ace Ventura came out, and the numbers started to solidify at $5 million. We had Dumb and Dumber. He had another offer for another movie — and we offered $7 million. To the town, it looked like I took him from a quarter of a million dollars to $7 million. So it was like, “Oh, he’s ruining the business!”

You bet on Paul Thomas Anderson last year with One Battle After Another, just as you did early in his career starting with 1997’s Boogie Nights and 1999’s Magnolia. Did that first one feel like a gamble, considering how long its runtime was?

DE LUCA I actually advocated for it to be a little longer and have a disco intermission. And Paul’s like, “No, we’re not doing the disco.” There’s a whole section of that movie he cut out that nobody has seen that I thought was really brilliant.

You had a string of hits but then hit a slow patch in 2000, including Little Nicky, and co-founder Bob Shaye fired you.

DE LUCA Bob and I had just had enough of each other. He met me when I was 19, and for my 16-year history at that company, I was all like, “I built this place and you don’t appreciate it!” And he was like, “We made you and you don’t appreciate it!” And it was just so tired that by the time I had a few flops, they were all looking for a way to get me out the door.

You got out before AOL took over but also before you got to enjoy the success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

DE LUCA I had stock options in New Line. When AOL bought the studio, it shot up before it came plunging down. When they fired me, my business manager was like, “You should diversify.” So he got me out at $70 a share. After I left, the stock plunged to $2. Everybody at Warners and New Line got wiped out. Bob and I had lunch a year later to do the man hug and pat on the back and be like, “I love you.” And he goes, “I’ve got to thank you for Lord of the Rings. You annoyed me so much and made me feel like I wasn’t in charge of my own company that I knew I had to throw down on something that was just me [denying De Luca credit], and that’s how we got Lord of the Rings.”

So I said, “I have to thank you too because had you not fired me, I would have been wiped out also, but thanks to diversifying after you fired me, I have a nest egg.” Then he got rich again anyway by investing in Tesla, because that’s how it rolls for people like Bob Shaye.

How did the two of you [De Luca and Abdy] meet?

ABDY In the ’90s, when I was at Jersey as an assistant, Jersey was producing a film at New Line when Mike was president called Living Out Loud, and we met in the editing room and became friends back then. We just had a shared love of stories and movies and filmmakers. We’re both Italian. We both love food. Both grew up on the East Coast. Had a lot in common.

Mike, in January 2020, you were hired as chairman at MGM, and you reached out to Pam to be your partner.

DE LUCA I thought, “MGM is an interesting case study.” You’ve got a franchise or two [with Bond and Creed]. The whole idea behind the phrase “tentpole,” when Hollywood came up with it, was the pole holds the tent up. The other movies are the tent. Then studios just became all pole, no tent. So I’m like, “I want to put the ‘tent’ back in ‘tentpole’ at MGM.” Pam agreed to do the job with me.

ABDY We went to work there under the craziest circumstances with COVID, building a studio again from scratch, really.

You made PTA’s Licorice Pizza, which became MGM’s first best picture Oscar nominee in 33 years. Soon after, you two headed to Warners.

DE LUCA When Amazon came in, their desire to integrate MGM into Prime Video and the way that they would adjudicate what’s theatrical and what’s streaming — we didn’t think that was a good fit for us. So, we were going to go produce together, and then on the way to figuring out where we wanted to do that, David Zaslav called.

There are some early Warners misses: Mickey 17, which you inherited, and Joker 2, which you greenlit. In March 2025, Bloomberg reported that Zaslav was interviewing replacements …

DE LUCA The town is so mean. … The pearl-clutching that went on because we made a couple of original movies with Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan and Paul Thomas Anderson and Leonardo DiCaprio for less than the industry average of what a movie costs most studios, certainly tentpole movies, it seems so silly. When we got a 60,000-foot view, it seemed like, “Oh, this feels like it’s about the clickbait industry, and we know those algorithms are driven by negativity.”

But you’re human beings — it has to affect you to some degree.

ABDY Yes, we’re human. We have feelings like everybody. But we’re professionals and we have a lot of people that work for us. So he and I have to show up every day as leaders. We have a job to do.

DE LUCA By the way, we called everybody who was rumored to be up for our job, and they were like, “Not only did we not get a call for your job, we don’t want your job.”

Sinners and Coogler‘s rights reversion deal drove some of that pearl-clutching. Was that a hard deal to make?

ABDY This movie was about Black ownership. It was specific to this movie. Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan walked in the door with a commercial film that spoke to us on the page emotionally.

DE LUCA What doesn’t get reported is: Everything that we bid on and won, there was a runner-up bidder that was right there and about to do what we did. We just did it faster.

You guys just extended your contract in October. Can you walk me through the thought process, given that Warners is being acquired? [Editor’s note: This conversation took place before Paramount emerged as the surprise victor over Netflix in the bidding war.]

DE LUCA At our level, we’re kind of kept cocooned from the corporate shenanigans. It’s so far above our pay grades that we find out about most things when it’s reported in the press. The business units are on a need-to-know basis, which is good for everybody because it helps tamp down leaks and speculation and the snark industrial complex.

For the first time in 51 years, since Paramount had The Godfather Part II and Chinatown, one studio has not only the two most nominated films but the two clear frontrunners for best picture. How are you approaching this unusual problem of having two films up against each other?

ABDY I cried sitting on the couch listening to all the nominations for the talent. Mike and I talked to every single one of them.

DE LUCA To call [Sinners‘] Delroy Lindo and say, “Dude, overdue and congratulations,” or [Weapons‘] Amy Madigan, 40 years between nominations? These were incredible phone calls.

ABDY There’s nothing like it. At the end of the day, we shut the door and we gave each other a hug and we got emotional. It’s easy to get caught up in the hecticness and the chaos and all of it. And for both of us, in our 30-year friendship, to take a moment and appreciate that this time has happened, I will forever feel grateful, no matter what happens.

DE LUCA There are other people in town that feel this way, and certainly our friend and colleague, Donna Langley at Universal, feels this way: After the pandemic, we were like, “If you build it, they will come.” There’s a whole other faction that’s like, “They’re not coming. Don’t build it.” And we’re like, “We’ve got to build it.” The fact that audiences showed up for these movies meant the world to us because it means we can continue trying to do it.

This story appeared in the March 11 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.