Netflix Buying WB Is a Lesser Catastrophe

David Zaslav’s merger of Discovery with Warner Bros. failed before it even began. The same month that the merger was finalized (April 2022) was also the same month that Netflix’s subscriptions dropped for the first time, and Wall Street changed its metric for how it would view streaming success towards hours watched. Zaslav originally planned to take on tens of billions of dollars of debt, but win the streaming wars by combining WB’s largely narrative-based properties with the reality TV slop of the Discovery channels. But it never worked out that way because Zaslav didn’t know how to lead or build anything of value, and now he fails upwards once again as Netflix comes in to gobble up WB and some of its properties. 

Had Zaslav succeeded, then WB wouldn’t have needed a buyer so badly, but as it became clear there was no way to service its debt without massive restructuring (earlier this year the plan was to spin off a bunch of the TV channels including CNN and Discovery into their own business, and presumably that business would carry the debt load, leaving WB largely free to make Game of Thrones spinoffs and DC superhero movies), Paramount stepped up to become a buyer. David Ellison, the waxy son of wealthy supervillain Larry Ellison, had already gotten his damp hands around Paramount’s empire, and now he wanted to make WB a subsidiary like Disney recently did with 20th Century Fox. Even more worrisome would be handing over control of a major news organization like CNN to someone like Bari Weiss, who isn’t a news editor as much as someone who will flatter the petty grievances of the disgustingly wealthy.

So, in terms of minor victories, WB not falling into Paramount’s hands is a good thing. While Ellison can still try to purchase CNN as it spins off into the new business of Discovery Global TV in late 2026, cable news is a dying beast, which is why Comcast recently dropped its new channels, and MSNBC is now MS NOW. Ellison is free to sink money into CNN if he thinks he can make it profitable or a suitable mouthpiece for more right-wing propaganda, but who knows if that’s worth the effort, especially if his initial interest in WB was for expansion.

But I can’t sugarcoat Netflix’s purchase here. To begin, any acquisition is a disaster, and I’m sure it’s disheartening to the employees across Warner Bros. Discovery to be treated in such a thoughtless manner. Furthermore, the company keeps going through these upheavals, whether it’s the AOL Time Warner deal of 2001 to shedding various properties over the next decade until it was acquired by AT&T in 2018, to Discovery’s purchase in 2022. Yes, technology has created massive upheaval in the industry, but I would also argue that the company’s stewardship has been abysmal, passed around between pasty white guys in Patagonia vests who talk about “content” and “value” while lacking the understanding to create either.

It's clear that Netflix is hungry for WB’s library and wants to keep expanding by adding marquee titles like Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, and all the other shiny IP jewels that WB possesses. More importantly, Netflix has stayed firm on eschewing any distribution that isn’t centered on streaming. They don’t like theaters, and they don’t like physical media. They don’t want to operate like a classic studio, and while their press release claims that they’ll continue to build on WB’s theatrical operations, I wouldn’t be surprised if those days are numbered. Netflix recently blew up a deal with Weapons filmmaker Zach Cregger over his desire for a theatrical release. Netflix wants to keep putting filmmakers inside their little streaming box, and while filmmakers like Guillermo del Toro and Rian Johnson may complain about the lack of real theatrical releases for their new Netflix movies, they made a choice: take the Netflix money or don’t make your movie at all. They took the Netflix money, and now more artists will have to make the same deal.

Very few people “win” in this deal, even though Netflix and WB will tout this merger as a victory for investors, employees, and consumers. Only the people at the very top, like Ted Sarandos, Reed Hastings, David Zaslav, and other C-suite execs, will make out well here. Everyone else will have to deal with massive uncertainty as the industry further contracts. It’s another step towards Hollywood films losing their place at the center of global culture and towards further fragmentation and atomization of the audience who spends hours browsing a digital interface before resorting to something familiar. Locking in the Lord of the Rings movies to Netflix will certainly boost the “hours watched” metric, but in terms of creating anything new to bring people together, I wouldn’t count on it.

And that’s a shame because if Warner Bros. showed us anything this year, it’s how exciting it can be to watch original features like Sinners, Weapons, and One Battle After Another in a theater filled with people. It takes a big studio to fund movies with massive scopes, and while I know that international filmmakers are continuing to offer exciting pictures, something is being lost here, just as something was lost when studios stopped betting on star-driven original vehicles and flocked to the safety of pre-existing IP. Netflix acquiring WB is not a merger in the entertainment space, but a diminishment where everyone has fewer choices than they did before. 

I don’t want to leave you feeling hopeless over all this, so I’ll conclude with the following. First, this is not Hollywood’s first upheaval, and it likely won’t be its last. The death of The Movies has been said almost as long as movies have been around. Television was supposed to kill movies, and then VHS was supposed to kill movies. Maybe streaming will finally kill theatrical and movies will die off or become a rarefied art form like a Broadway show (Steven Spielberg and George Lucas said as much back in 2013). But I would advise everyone to get out of the prediction business.

Furthermore, whatever Hollywood filmmaking becomes, I truly believe movies as an art form are here to stay, even if they lose their central place in pop culture. It’s a unique form of artistic expression, and even if Hollywood can no longer figure out theatrical distribution, we should take comfort in how 2025 has been a banner year for international movies. Growing up, a film like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a phenomenon because most people wouldn’t bother seeing a foreign film with subtitles. Today, international continues to break through with films like It Was Just an Accident, No Other Choice, Sentimental Value, Resurrection, and more. There’s never been a better time to start digging into the work of non-English auteurs. 

Finally, no matter what corporations do, they can’t take away your love of movies. I will say that now is the time to really start investing in physical media (I feel like the days of Warner Archive are numbered) and finding ways to protect the movies you love because the studios have no interest in such preservation. It’s going to be contingent on us who see these films as art rather than content to celebrate and share these works. Netflix will continue to invest in its algorithm and see works of art as nothing more than opportunities for AI slop. It’s up to the rest of us to invest in movies as movies.