Warner Bros.’ Ex-Movie Chief Is Betting on TV Development In a Tough Market

Toby Emmerich led Warner Bros.' Motion Picture Group from 2017 until 2022. Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images

After leaving a movie studio chief role, the next era for some executives can be the wilderness. For Toby Emmerich, the veteran Warner Bros. and New Line exec who shepherded billion-dollar grossers like The Hobbit trilogy and greenlit Barbie, his 2022 exit during another sale for the studio came with a soft landing. On his way out, he took a deal from the David Zaslav-run Warner Bros. Discovery on a five-year arrangement to finance his own shingle, titled Fireside, and is producing Amazon MGM’s young Sylvester Stallone biopic I Play Rocky, among other features.

His next bet? Expanding his banner to television development — with financial backing from Warner Music billionaire Len Blavatnik’s Access investment vehicle — and an additional partner in veteran producer Amanda Krentzman. The exec notes, candidly, it’s not a seller’s market for shingles in the development space, but sees an opportunity as the big studios pare back on the era of rich overall deals. Emmerich spoke with The Hollywood Reporter on his plans and the industry landscape.

You’ve spent a career focused on film development, and currently have a first-look movie deal at Warner Bros. after your exit as studio chief, what was the calculation to expand your banner to TV?

I just think some of the best storytelling that’s happening on the planet right now is happening in television. And the talent that is creating that those stories, the storytellers, aren’t really, as far as I can see, necessarily discriminating against film or television. They’re happy to work in both mediums. So as a producer, your job is to find talented people and to hold onto them and not let them go. And if they are going to go into television, you should go there with them.

What’s behind the name of your company, Fireside?

The theory is that storytelling started in caves with the invention of fire, and you had to wait for the meat to cook. And while the meat was cooking, you told each other stories about the hunt or such, and you maybe even drew paintings of it on the wall that kind of looked like moving images in the flickering firelight, but the idea that there’s something very primordial that humans need to sort of be told and tell each other stories.

How did you link up with Len Blavatnik’s team and what was the mogul’s Access investment firm interested in?

Len I’ve known for 25 years and have been always interested in doing something with him. He’s also a lover of storytelling and I think does have discerning tastes. I’ve known Danny [Cohen, formerly of the BBC, who now leads Blavatnik’s Access Entertainment] since he’s worked with Len and had come close to finding some projects with them over the years, but nothing ever quite got 100 percent there. And since I was free in television and Len already had Danny working for him, the idea of being able to partner with them to try to find projects to do together was just very attractive, for me at least.

Part of the pitch being made is that studios are pulling back financing on TV development, so you can help fill that gap. Could you unpack that more on the landscape now?

It does seem like it’s becoming strongly a buyer’s market right now for television writers, and a lot of writers that used to have overall deals where they were getting paid by the studios to develop material have lost those deals. And so there’s an opportunity, it feels like, to work with writers like that in a modest way to maybe develop some things to the point where studios would then be interested in taking them over.

When you say lost, do you mean there’s just fewer signings or fewer re-upping of the deals?

I think a little of both.

The writers roll off rich deals to find there’s less of a boom market than there was a few years ago.

I think so, other than for the most proven and most sought after showrunners.

At what point in the development process are you looking to back projects?

It really depends on the project. I would say the point where you can attract the right partner.

There’s been a slight uptick in TV pilots greenlit this season after a long downward trend. What do you think about the mini-revival?

It’s a pendulum with an ebb and a flow. It’s a good sign, but it doesn’t mean we’re returning to the heyday of what they were calling Peak TV.

You’re based on the Warner Bros. lot, where there’s lots of chatter about not enough Hollywood work in L.A. What’s your take on the “Stay in L.A.” and other red-tape cutting efforts to keep production local?

The Warner lot looks kind of buzzy to me. It feels like there’s a lot of stuff shooting there. So just anecdotally, it feels like there’s a lot of production happening in L.A., but clearly not enough is happening in L.A., and I think it’s a shame.

Do you think that there’s a lot of tough choices being made about concessions that producers may need to make in order to continue shooting in L.A.?

I think it’s always a push-pull where you want as much of your spend to go up on the screen as possible. And if you can make the same show in a far-flung location for a lot less money and therefore have more money to spend on the cast, and the cast shows up on the screen, you want to do that. Then, of course, the cast wants to stay home in L.A., so you have to shoot in L.A., but then you cut other stuff from below-the-line. It’s a constant struggle.

I haven’t been actively involved in a production that I’ve had to deal with that on other than I Play Rocky, which I guess in a normal world we would have shot that movie in New York and Pennsylvania. We ended up shooting it in New Jersey because they had the best tax deal, and that tends to be where I feel like we’re just chasing tax deals around the globe a lot of the time.

Along with production flight, AI is the other topic everyone talks about when it comes to Hollywood jobs or workflows being impacted. How does it factor, if at all, in what you’re doing now?

The people that know how to use AI the best are going to have an advantage. So spending time using Claude or ChatGPT or Perplexity — even just for creative executives, for screenwriters — I don’t think those AIs can write a script for you, but they can actually give you pretty good script notes. And they’re certainly interesting to see how it analyzes. What AI looks like today is going to be very different from what it looks like two years from now.

Do you think it works for things like coverage?

No, I’ve tried it. I haven’t found it to be able to really give me what I think is good or accurate coverage. I would say that AI coverage is not very good, but human coverage is not that good either.

I think as a producer, you realize there is no substitution for reading the script. Clint Eastwood in his office has the framed coverage of the screenplay for Unforgiven, which is a “Hard Pass,” and he gets a kick out of how hard the pass was in coverage.

But when Clint showed that coverage to me and told me the story, it confirmed what I’ve always said to my colleagues and friends, which is “don’t rely on coverage.”

You know what it’s like working under uncertainty due to consolidation, having been elevated to lead Warner Bros. film unit when AT&T was buying the studio, then exiting as Discovery took over. Now Warners appears likely to have a new owner in the Ellisons, how does that turnover impact pipeline strategy?

What David Ellison has said publicly is that each studio will provide 15 titles a year for 30 total. I take him at his word and that feels very robust and promising. I’m sure there’ll be efficiencies and synergies, but to have two real standalone studio labels or studio entities that are each producing 15 films a year, that sounds really promising to me. I’m hoping to have a share of those movies to be Fireside films.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.