Jane Fonda has been leading the charge, along with the Screen Actors Guild, railing against the Netflix deal that would gobble up Warner Bros. for 43 billion dollars. The emotions in Hollywood have gone from apprehension to anger about this deal, and people are actually worried it could be consequential to the First Amendment itself. Some might say that’s hyperbole, but think about this.
Netflix is going to be given token releases to theater chains such as AMC, IMAX, and Cinemark. Those stocks fell 8% on Friday because this merger may represent a total consolidation of the industry under a corporate conglomerate. Corporate conglomerates aren’t rare these days. We don’t have many companies like we once did—just big giant corporations eating up the competition and owning it.
This is also the tech giants owning something as opposed to the old Hollywood elite. Warner Bros owns a lot of horror franchises. Let’s think about Pennywise the Dancing Clown and Freddy Krueger. Let’s think about some of the others you’ve come to love on different streaming platforms. Netflix will now own those rights and distribute them the way they see fit, if this deal and acquisition go through.
So maybe we all agree with Jane Fonda, and maybe we’re all a little bit worried. And quite frankly, if Netflix really wants to do something here, they can either kill movie theaters—or allow them to thrive.
