There Are No Good Corporate Mergers

It's the late 60s. Per the Stephen M. Silverman book The Fox That Got Away: The Last Days of the Zanuck Dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox, Fox head Dick Zanuck has become infatuated with how technology could impact the film business. Specifically, the text details how his associate Henry DeMeyer once pitched an idea for concocting surefire box office hits. "Take the components of a movie, feed them into a computer, and sit back and wait for a definite formula for a box office smash." The operation went nowhere, though. Per the book, DeMeyer later remarked "the computer kept spitting back everything we fed into it. We never did come up with a formula." 

From the very dawn of computers, though, movie studio heads were eager to eliminate artists and have hardware just make movies that could generate revenue. Executives were looking out for themselves and nobody else.

It's October 1947.  Walt Disney was still outraged when his animators went on strike in the early 1940s. He would later testify before HUAC that many of the artists seeking wages were communists out to "destroy" America. These artists were largely union organizers who wanted livable wages. Their lives and careers were ruined after this testimony. Walt would go on to both even greater power and higher financial stability in the last 20 years of his life. Once again, a studio executive looked out for himself and didn't think anything of the little man.

On and on the stories go, from the 1920s to 2025. Powerful studio heads and other executives often don't see the people working for them as human beings.  Accusations of MGM head Louis B. Mayer abusing and violating women (specifically, famous actresses under contract with the studio) are legendary. They're objects to grope and exert power over. They're "whiners" disrupting the workflow of the animation pipeline. They're expendable objects that a computer program could replace. All the while, these executives harbor delusions of procuring more and more power and dollars for their coffers. They will never spend every penny. They will never savor every ounce of power they amass. The point is not to enjoy the splendors of their debauchery. It's to loom over other people and temporarily say, "I'm king of the mountain."

It is December 2025. Netflix is poised to purchase Warner Bros. (along with the HBO Max streaming service) for $82 billion. The most optimistic read of this situation is "hey, Larry Ellison and his pro-surveillance state/pro-genocide company Skydance won't own WB at least." Otherwise, this is a disastrous move further consolidating entertainment industry power into fewer hands (and Silicon Valley hands at that). Everyone actually working in the global film industry, including European theater owners and various guilds representing American entertainment artists, knows this deal is bad for the industry. Of course it'll result in fewer movies getting made and fewer motion pictures getting traditional theatrical releases. 

Anonymous A-list filmmakers even sent out a letter yesterday to American politicians protesting this proposed merger as a blow to the film industry. Always a good sign when people have to complain anonymously out of fear of a corporation punishing them. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos even reaffirmed this morning on a conference call with Wall Street his contempt for "theatrical windows" and sure seemed to indicate WB releases will eventually go straight to streaming. Earlier this year, I wrote a Pajiba piece chronicling the 10+ year hatred Sarandos has had for movie theaters, and it's truly insane. I presume Sarandos bathes in the tears of independent movie theater owners the same way Baron Harkonnen bathes in oil in Dune.

Sarandos declared this morning that "We’re highly confident in the regulatory process [of the Netflix/WB marger]. This deal is pro-consumer, pro-innovation, pro-worker, it’s pro-creator, it’s pro-growth.” He is lying. When this merger is completed (please it get blocked), thousands will be laid off. Countless movies will suddenly get their green lights revoked or erased entirely. We saw this when Discovery took over Warner Bros.We saw this when Disney bought 20th Century Fox. It's happening now with Skydance's conservative takeover of Paramount Pictures. The fates of Mouse Guard, Batgirl, and countless other movies are a warning sign for the future of Netflix and Warner Bros.

Countless people lost their jobs after the Disney/20th Century Fox merger in 2019 (heck, Blue Sky Studios went under entirely). 1,000 people recently lost their jobs at Paramount after the Skydance merger. The original WarnerDiscovery merger also resulted in catastrophic layoffs, including countless employees of color losing their jobs. That would inevitably happen here too. More people living paycheck to paycheck would lose everything.

From the days of Walt hating unions to Dick Zanuck salivating over a computer replacing screenwriters, the film industry has been built on rich executives screwing over working-class souls, consumers, and art itself. A modern landscape where monopolies are encouraged, Silicon Valley losers control everything, and "enshittification" is in full effect is bound to amplify those problems. Corporate mergers have always been bad for artists and consumers. A corporate merger enacted by the people who thought The Gray Man was worth spending $200+ million on is bound to be a nightmare.

What's really tragic about all this is that Netflix is a company (like so many Silicon Valley entities) built on isolation. This is a platform meant to keep you glued to your couch and not leave your house. To boot, they inundate you with "content" meant to make you scared of the outside world. This is a realm where stand-up specials full of cis-het male comedians lambasting racial minorities or regurgitating boogeyman rhetoric about trans people.reign supreme. Netflix's programming is about keeping you indoors and frightened of the larger world. Do not interact with people who don't look like you. Do not watch documentaries with challenging material that speak truth to power. Come, sink into the digital camerawork slop. Netflix's planned rampant use of generative AI in its platform will inevitably ensure its technology is used to further distance people from the real world and their neighbors. 

Meanwhile, WB's 2025 offerings like Sinners, Weapons, and One Battle After Another brought strangers into theaters to engage with and enjoy completely original storytelling together. These were communal experiences centered on films that often emphasized the joys of being with other human beings. The juke joint in Sinners. One Battle After Another depicting everyone from skateboards to random hospital workers to two guys on the side of a road as being heroes. Even the Weapons finale focused on kids banding together to destroy a villainous witch. 

Will we get those experiences again with Netflix owning Warner Bros.? I presume even Sarandos knows A Minecraft Movie and the biggest DC movies don't do as well with two weeks of play in a handful of theaters. However, the next original movie equivalents to Sinners and One Battle After Another will likely suffer the same fate as other quality movies like Shirkers, The 40 Year Old Version, The Death of Dick Johnson that went straight to Netflix: obscurity. We're staring at the inevitable end result of both Ronald Reagan's monstrous pro-corporate merger agenda and "the entire US economy right now [being] 7 companies sending a trillion fake dollars back and forth to each other."

Here's the good news, at least: this merger isn't happening tomorrow. It'll take roughly a year for it to go through (allegedly WB is spinning off its TV operations into a separate company in summer 2026 before Netflix purchases the film studio and HBO Max), which could ensure there is time for anti-trust challenges to bubble up. I'd also imagine the various WB movies scheduled for release between now and the end of 2027 have ironclad contracts guaranteeing normal theatrical releases. Most of all, we can make our voices heard.

Protest this merger. Support local unions, independent movie theaters, and the organizations crusading for the rights of individuals who will be affected by this merger. Donate to GoFundMe's and crowdfunding campaigns supporting the communities and people Netflix's corporate standards clearly don't care about. These billionaires and powerful corporations want to make the proletariat feel powerless. We're not. We have power, and we have each other. There are no good corporate mergers, but there are countless ways we can endure in this capitalistic hellscape. Do not give up. And hey, maybe go see a good movie on the big screen with other people.