Why Monolith Productions was shut down — Jason Schreier explains
At the start of the week, it became known that Warner Bros. Discovery is closing three studios: Monolith Productions, Player First Games, and WB San Diego. Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier shared insights on the Kinda Funny Games podcast about the reasons behind Monolith Productions' closure and what had been happening at the studio in recent years.
Middle-earth Shadow of War
Main Points:
- According to Schreier, many online blame Warner Bros.’s CEO David Zaslav, but this is not quite fair. When he took over the company, Monolith hadn’t released anything for four and a half years;
- the root of the problem, Schreier sees, is the chaotic leadership of the head of the gaming division, David Haddad, who took the position in 2015 and is now preparing to resign. Under his leadership, many previously successful studios faced challenges;
- in 2014, Monolith released its major hit Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor. Its sequel, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, was far less successful, and in 2017 the studio decided to move on from this franchise and focus on a new IP. They began developing an innovative game under the codename Legacy with procedural storytelling based on the Nemesis system;
- however, Warner Bros. was not interested in new IPs. While top management verbally supported Monolith, praising Legacy, decision-making on budgets, timelines, and other critical aspects was significantly delayed. As a result, Legacy was canceled in 2021;
- after Legacy's cancellation, the entire key team at Monolith left. This greatly complicated the studio's future efforts;
- in spring 2021, Monolith took on a Wonder Woman game and officially announced it by December of the same year. The announcement was made quickly in part to attract new developers to replace those who left. Additionally, Warner Bros. was pressuring the studio, unhappy with Monolith's absence of releases for a long time;
- development of Wonder Woman was challenging. About a year ago, the project was restarted, and the game director was changed, but it was too late. For Warner Bros., 2024 was disastrous—due to failures like Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League, MultiVersus, and Harry Potter: Quidditch Champions, the company lost hundreds of millions of dollars. Thus, Wonder Woman's cancellation was only a matter of time;
- in Schreier's view, there was no point for Warner Bros. to sell Monolith instead of closing it. Few would want an expensive Seattle-based studio that requires high salaries, especially when Monolith would either have to start developing a new game from scratch or continue working on Wonder Woman while paying substantial licensing fees to Warner Bros.;
- Schreier hopes that the environment at Warner Bros. will improve after Haddad's departure. The interim head of the gaming division will be Jean-Briac Perrette, who makes a good impression. He also believes that studios like Rocksteady, WB Montréal, and Avalanche Software are currently safe—it’s extremely unlikely the company will undertake new closures in the next couple of years.