David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Brothers Discovery, said on Thursday that the US media company was “in the business of storytelling”. In the current narrative, Zaslav appears to be the ham-fisted corporate villain. In recent months, university students have jeered him and Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese have wrangled with him amid a strike by rank-and-file Hollywood writers and actors.

On Tuesday, Zaslav did not have much good news on the big picture in Hollywood. The best tale the former mentee to GE’s “Neutron” Jack Welch could drum up involved bean counting.

The company’s streaming service Max hit adjusted ebitda break even in the quarter after losing $550mn in the same period of the previous year. WBD’s gross debt balance fell to $48bn after it paid back a couple of billion of borrowings. It is on its way to shrinking its leverage ratio from 4.6 times currently to under 3 times over the next 18 months. Annual savings from the merger of Discovery and Warner Media are set to rise from $4bn to $5bn.