Popverse's top stories

• Critical Role's Matt Mercer teases Campaign 4's new setting of Aramán - and how it differs from Exandria
• What to Watch October 2025: Halloween is just around the corner, and Netflix's Monster: The Ed Gein Story, Prime Video's Hazbin Hotel, and HBO's IT: Welcome to Derry are just a few ways to stream and scream
• Marvel Comics and Magic: The Gathering reveal their second collab: and its all Avengers (and more)

Have movies gotten too political? Should there be politics in movies, or should they stick to simply entertaining? That’s a question that has been debated for generations, and in our hyper-politicized times, it doesn’t look like the debate is ending anytime soon.

Warner Bros. acknowledges that movies are art, and art by its nature is political. But what’s the line that separates art, entertainment, and politics?

“I always think about that old adage that Sam Goldwyn said reportedly. If you want to send a message, hire Western Union,” Warner Bros. co-chair Mike De Luca says during a Substack discussion with Franklin Leonard. “We're here to entertain, and to generate box office revenue from entertaining people. That's our North Star. If we think a movie is entertaining because it's counterculture, or because it's anti-establishment, it's going to get made because we think we can make money with it.”

“If we end up not making money with it, it isn't because we had a political agenda, it just meant that the audience didn't feel about it the same way we feel about it. In the 70s, you saw filmmakers like Hal Ashby, or producers like Bert Schneider and his company BBS, and John Calley with All the President's Men. You saw movies that reflected the tenor of the times be commercially successful and be critically successful with an administration that would have preferred those things not get made.”

“I think that art, for better or worse, I really feel like art exists outside of that pettiness and outside of that dialogue. Administrations come and go, but these movies are forever. These libraries of movies are forever, and they transcend the politics of the times. Sometimes they go right at the politics of the times, and that's their reason for being. Sometimes they just accidentally reflect the zeitgeist, because storytellers can't help through osmosis but pick up certain things, certain themes that are going on in the world.”

“We don't really think about it, because we don't want anything to get in the way, or make us second guess or edit our ability to just say this is really entertaining, whether it's a drama, or a horror film, or a comedy, or something with social relevance. It's entertaining. We think people will show up for it. This is something we want to add to the Warner Brothers library. Those are really the things that drive us.”

“Something could be prophetic today and be dated tomorrow and be cast in a whole different light a year from now. I don't think you can be worried about what's going on in the moment if you're in the business of storytelling.”

This raises the question on how to market movies. When asked if this meant hiding controversial political messages during marketing campaign, De Luca responded that it had to be true to the movie and the audience.

“The way we market movies now, and with the advent of social media, and the way things can go viral in a great way, and the way you can invite that audience to be participatory with you. It's more like we look for those things and things that can be actualized on those platforms that can help market a movie.”

“We don't really think about hiding things from the audience. Or, 'We can't put that in a trailer or a TV spot because it might offend someone.' I think audiences can sniff that out. Like, I smell bullshit on this. For better or worse, if you've made it, I think you got to market it like you understand what it is, and you're true to it. I think the worst thing you can be in marketing, the worst thing you can be with an audience right now is inauthentic.”

“They smell it from a mile away,” Warner Bros. co-chair Pam Abdy says. “We look at it, who's the core audience of that film? Sometimes there's four quadrants, sometimes it's men, sometimes it's women. We like to ignite that core audience first, and then it branches out from there. When we look at all of our marketing materials, it's about what is the engagement with that audience online, and how are they receiving it, and how are they talking about it. And that's the North Star.”

Want to know what's coming up next in pop culture? Check out Popverse's guides to:

• Upcoming movies
• Upcoming TV shows
• Upcoming comics
• Upcoming games
• Upcoming fiction books
• Upcoming comic conventions