06 Feb Q&A: Former Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Chief Jim Wuthrich’s Exit Interview [Media Play News]
BY THOMAS K. ARNOLD
February 6, 2023 | Warner Bros. Discovery content sales president and DEG Chair Emeritus Jim Wuthrich’s decision to resign late last year was as sudden as it was unexpected. The 58-year-old executive had played a critical role at Warner Bros. — and in the home entertainment industry — since joining the studio in 1998, just as support for DVD was revving up. Hired as a director of marketing and quickly promoted to VP, he was thrust in the middle of the aggressive campaign to launch DVD as the successor to the VHS videocassette, which involved not just a completely new product but also a dramatic shift in consumer habits, from renting movies to buying and collecting them.
Once DVD was established, Wuthrich pioneered the development of digital products and distribution. After running international and then the Americas, he was promoted to worldwide head of home entertainment and games in 2018 and weathered two mergers as well as the rise to dominance of streaming. Most recently, he added WBD content licensing to his portfolio and led the team responsible for the theatrical windowing strategy that maximized the exposure and value of WB Pictures’ films after they left the theater.
Media Play News caught up with Wuthrich for an “exit interview” just after he led his family on a hiking adventure in Tanzania up Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa and the highest freestanding mountain above sea level in the world.