This morning, it was announced that Netflix had acquired Warner Bros for $82.7 billion. This deal means that everything owned by WB will now be owned and operated by streaming giant Netflix, including film, TV, HBO Max, and HBO. This comes in the middle of a bounce-back year for Warner Bros, as they were the first studio to cross $4 billion in total revenue for the year, their first time doing so since 2019. Nine of their films opened No. 1 at the box office this year, and seven consecutive films opened at $40 million or better.
Money makes the world go round, no matter how much you want to deny it. When David Zaslav took over in 2022, you can argue that he’s done nothing but line his pockets at a time when WB was really struggling. That being said, the last few years haven’t been kind to Netflix either.
Netflix has seen success, launching numerous shows and films, and its most popular original series just returned for its final season, but the overall feeling toward Netflix has been one of apathy. Between a crackdown on password sharing, price increases, and shows gaining a lot of traction online or with viewers only to never get a season two, Netflix has seen its star fall in recent years, especially amid the overcrowding of the streaming market. Netflix pulled the trigger on this acquisition for a reason, and I can’t really fault them for it. Warner has a library that spans years, and now they are the sole owner of it. But corporate greed is going to catch them up if they continue to operate the way they are.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has gone on record saying that the movie theater experience is outdated and that most consumers would prefer to watch movies at home. That was several months ago, and this morning, he came out and said they were committed to keeping Warner’s released movies in theaters, but the release window would be shorter. In the same interview from months ago, he also said, “The studios and the theaters are duking it out over trying to preserve this 45-day window that is completely out of step with the consumer experience of just loving a movie.”
I want to believe that Netflix has what’s best for Warner Bros in mind, but I see how they treat shows that aren’t Stranger Things, and I get scared. Bye-bye physical releases of your favorite movie, you might get a TV show if it’s distributed by another studio, and you might get lucky if they decide to add a movie to the Criterion Collection, but you can largely forget about adding movies to your collection if you’re into that. At the end of the day, we all could just be overreacting, but I think we all know where this is going; it’s just unfortunate that we can’t seem to stop this train.
Above and Beyond the Screen 