Netflix to Buy Warner Brothers? No, Paramount Skydance!

[domino harvey]

Really glad WA sat on all the movies people actually want for over a decade now. I’ll give you one guess what one of the first redundancies cut is going to be

[beamish14]

Really glad WA sat on all the movies people actually want for over a decade now. I’ll give you one guess what one of the first redundancies cut is going to be

Say goodbye to repertory screenings and new celluloid prints, too.

[dwk]

Cliff MacMillan seemed frustrated with Paramount in that YouTube interview he did last week, and was very open about how much he was against this deal. Which makes me think this is also going to be bad for boutiques licensing from ParaBrothers.

[domino harvey]

Disney already showed you the future when they ate Fox and more or less erased the entire studio era legacy of one of the two or three most important studios of the classic era, wiping out nearly all home video releases. They’re just gone. Paramount releases and licenses movies now, sure, but if Disney doesn’t see the money in it I don’t know why anyone thinks it will keep doing so now that they too are a mega studio

[Drucker]

I honestly have no idea what the right path here is.

As a fan of film, I'm dismayed about what this will obviously mean for the lack of resources allocated to library titles, preservation, and of course, home video releases. As someone left leaning politically, it's abhorrent the way people so clearly in the tank for Trump, including his Middle Eastern handlers, will be able to control such major news outlets in the country. It's all a very bad outcome.

But, devil's advocate here, the die is long cast on legacy media, certainly as it pertains to television. And I'm not sure what other outcome there is, long-term, if we're being realistic. The cable and network TV business printed money for years, and that's just not happening any more. The economic model that powered television (syndication, DVD sales) has been permanently upended by streaming services and, crucially, social media/youtube/tiktok. The eyeballs (supply) for TV is dwindling and shrinking every year. Maybe the film industry is recovering more than COVID lows, but that seems like a devil in the details situation (huge blockbusters, children's films, superhero films). There is no more middle. Hell, surprising breakouts

What I'm trying to say is, constituted as they are, with a combination film and TV studio/cable business: what else could the outcome for WBD be?

[domino harvey]

Not sell itself?