Warner Bros. Is For Sale - Your Attention Doesn't Have To Be

One of the remaining pillars of the pre-streaming film world, Warner Bros., has just been hit with two large bricks by name of Netflix and Paramount-Skydance. In actuality, there is a bidding war underway that could see either a further decline to the already-suffering business of theatrical releases or more control from American president Donald Trump with regard to news outlets such as CNN, as well as potential releases of Rush Hour franchise reboots. This is all very exciting (or very alarming depending on how much you care about the art of filmmaking and film watching), so let’s break down what has actually transpired in this real-life Succession episode. There had been months of speculation surrounding the fate of Warner Bros. after its largely unsuccessful merger with Discovery and continued struggles to compete with streaming services before the initial stages of the buyout. In October, it was announced that the company may be up for sale, and in December, Netflix launched its $72 billion bid. This was then met with a $104 billion hostile bid by Paramount-Skydance. To anyone invested in the future of cinema, this is all worrying news.

Netflix occupies a much-maligned space in the world of film; to many, the service is the genesis of all that is wrong with cinema today, the killer of the moviegoing experience. The notion of a company that actively works against theatrical releases acquiring one of the industry’s largest studios spells further disaster for its physical sector (albeit Netflix have promised to maintain theatrical releases, but its CEO claiming earlier this year that such things are “outdated” calls this into immediate question). A merger with Netflix would also render Warner Bros’ own HBO Max streaming service more or less obsolete, should Netflix acquire the rights to shows like The Sopranos and Game of Thrones. Netflix’s competitor in this battle is no more appealing. It takes very little digging to discover Paramount-Skydance CEO David Ellison’s links to the Trump administration; Ellison’s father, Larry Ellison (the fifth-richest man in the world) has been a longtime supporter of the Trump administration as well as a donor to the IDF, and David Ellison himself has been open about his working relationship with the president.

Unlike Netflix, Paramount-Skydance seeks to acquire the Discovery side of Warner Bros Discovery, which includes news channel CNN. This follows the Trump administration’s bids for media control, aided recently by Paramount in their restructuring of CBS news. One of the more bizarre news items to come out of this partnership is Trump’s demands to resuscitate the Rush Hour franchise, subsequently fulfilled by Paramount - Rush Hour 4 is now in development, at the personal request of the leader of the free world. Big news for fans of Jackie Chan. Should Warner Bros Discovery be bought by either bidder, the general public wouldn’t be likely to feel any major shockwaves (immediately, at least). The subsequent discourse surrounding this buyout has been tonally dour; Hollywood trade unions are up in arms, and social media discussion is largely catastrophizing the situation as yet another loss of hope for the future of cinema. The egregious scale of this billionaire bidding war can make the current media landscape feel all the more dystopian, and these sentiments of impending doom shared among the general moviegoing public are not unfounded.

In the same week, Disney announced a partnership with OpenAI, whose CEO, Sam Altman, has recently been quoted saying he simply “cannot imagine parenting without ChatGPT”. None of this is exactly ideal for young people looking to the future of an industry that they may be consumers of or participants in. But what can we actually do to alleviate our existential pain over the weekly streams of increasingly dystopian headlines? For a start, we can push to consume physical media. The Criterion Collection’s Criterion Closet YouTube series is an increasingly popular celebration of the DVD; videos featuring the likes of Willem Dafoe and Paul Dano are clocking in millions of views. Social media trends and buzzwords taking a turn towards the esoteric and the “niche”, however maligned these trends may be (think “performative male contest”) offers more hope than initially meets the eye. If the toting of physical books (as an accessory or otherwise) has become prevalent enough to be dubbed annoying, we might just be heading in the right direction.

In the film industry, studios like A24 have enjoyed a surge in popularity since the late 2010s, and original screenplays like Sean Baker’s Anora, or Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, or even more high-brow adaptations like Dune seem to hold more weight in the cultural zeitgeist than the typical Marvel/Disney fodder that saturated much of the past decade. In the face of encroaching streaming fatigue and inundation of AI media slop, it’s important not to lose your hope or your mind. For anyone who cares about visual media, the rules remain the same; create art and support art. Cinemas will exist as long as we continue to go to them, and it is apparent that there remains a thriving appetite for well-crafted cinema, regardless of big studio mergers.

There is still inherent power in the audience (or “consumers”, as Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos so fondly calls us). It’s a tired talking point but an important one nonetheless: go see a movie, do it in person. Caring is the first step.