The New York Times covers the blockbuster merger between Netflix and Warner Bros with a litany of legitimate concerns and fears surrounding this deal from film industry insiders:
Michael O’Leary, chief executive of Cinema United, a trade organization that represents 30,000 movie screens in the United States, called the Netflix acquisition “an unprecedented threat” and vowed to fight it. “Theaters will close, communities will suffer, jobs will be lost,” Mr. O’Leary said, noting Netflix’s policy of giving movies only “token” releases in theaters.
For many crew, we have a love of movie theaters and the idea of The Big Screen. Does an industry without them expand or contract? Does it still occupy the same place in the cultural zeitgeist?
Entertainment workers in Los Angeles — camera operators, producers, hairstylists, writers, actors, set designers, editors — have already been struggling with a contracting job market. As a result of the coronavirus pandemic, two union strikes, an exodus of production to cheaper locales and the rise of artificial intelligence tools, tens of thousands of workers have been laid off by Hollywood companies since 2020.
So on Friday, there was a keen understanding that “consolidation” was just another word for “job loss.”
It’s been a rough year – or five – for many of us working below-the-line in the industry.
Netflix has a lot of jobs here, said a high-level aide to one City Council member, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he did not have the authority to comment publicly on the merger. But, he said, the Federal Communications Commission would have to approve the deal, and the worry would become what Netflix needs to do to appease President Trump.
With what Trump and his administration have already done to the media arts landscape writ large (60 Minutes / CBS, Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension, the Kennedy Center takeover) this is a real wildcard.
A significant concern, Mr. Perez said, is the potential impact of an even smaller marketplace for independent and boundary-pushing films. “Where you only have a few buyers, they’d rather have something that’s less risky, and you get safer, less controversial content and less experimentation,” he said. “Consolidation has the potential to kill creativity.”
“These mergers always promise benefits, but they always deliver diminished competition, lower pay and fewer jobs for workers,” she added. “It’s a very dismal day.”
There is no angle in which I see this merger as “good” news except two perspectives:
- Netflix is the lesser of two evils. Warner Bros selling to Paramount to create a mega-studio would’ve been much worse from a monopolistic perspective.
- You’re a Netflix stockholder.
The consolidation of the legacy studios into even larger, monolithic media mega-corporations does not bode well for an industry already hurting.
Finally, I can’t help but recall what Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said his goal was way back in 2012: “to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”
