Netflix acquires Warner Brothers

Why Netflix buying Warner Bros. is an apocalyptic disaster for movie fans - MUO​

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After a protracted bidding war, it has been revealed that Netflix will purchase Warner Bros., a 100-year-old movie studio responsible for a huge number of movie classics, for $82.7 billion. That means that Netflix will own the rights to the DC Comics movies, the Harry Potter series, the Game of Thrones franchise, HBO, and much more.

I don't want to be hyperbolic, but this is a direct attack on movie fans and threatens to grind our happiness into chalky acrid dust.

Cinema United, a trade organization of movie theater owners, isn't happy about this either: “The proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. by Netflix poses an unprecedented threat to the global exhibition business,” they said in a statement, per Deadline. Why are they so nervous?

Simply put, Netflix is known to be dead-set against showing movies in movie theaters. All you need to do is look at what CEO Ted Sarandos has said about the theatrical experience to understand why theater owners would be on edge.

Speaking at the Time100 Summit this past April, Sarandos called the idea of making movies with theatrical audiences in mind "an outdated concept," per Variety. "If you’re fortunate to live enough in Manhattan, and you can walk to a multiplex and see a movie, that’s fantastic. Most of the country cannot.”

To me, this reads like nonsense word salad. Ted, do you think people like watching movies in movie theaters because they're easy to walk to? People have cars, Ted. You sound ridiculous, Ted.

The simplest explanation is probably the correct one: Ted Sarandos doesn't like releasing movies in movie theaters because it means people aren't watching them on Netflix, and he thinks that cuts into his profit margins.

Warner Bros., on the other hand, had a spectacular year at the box office, with blockbusters like Superman and A Minecraft Movie making bank alongside sleeper hits like Sinners and Weapons; even an artsy epic like One Battle After Another made a splash in theaters.

Would these movies have had the same impact if they'd been unceremoniously dumped on Netflix alongside the Meghan Markle Christmas special and the new season of Emily in Paris? Probably not.
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www.makeuseof.com

Why Netflix buying Warner Bros. is an apocalyptic disaster for movie fans

Netflix will use this consolidated power to gut movie theaters, eliminate access to physical media, homogenize TV, and generally make me miserable.
www.makeuseof.com www.makeuseof.com
 
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