okay so let’s talk about this netflix x warner bros thing like an actual film-obsessed human being, not a finance bro on cnbc.
from where i’m sitting – as someone who basically lives inside letterboxd and movie theaters when life allows – this deal feels less like “the end of hollywood” and more like hollywood morphing into something smaller, more corporate, and a lot more IP-obsessed. not zero movies… but definitely less weirdness, less risk, and less oxygen for the stuff we actually fall in love with.
first, what actually happened?
netflix basically walked into the room and said: “yeah, i’ll take that entire century of film history, the dc universe, harry potter, dune, game of thrones, hbo and a bunch of major game studios, thanks.” tens of billions of dollars later, if this goes through, netflix stops being “just a streaming platform” and becomes a full-on old school studio + streamer + game publisher hybrid.
that means all of this ends up under one umbrella: batman, superman, joker, harry potter, fantastic beasts, dune, mad max, barbie, friends, lotr-style fantasy spin-offs, hbo prestige stuff like succession, true detective, the last of us…, and on the game side: hogwarts legacy, mortal kombat, batman: arkham, lego games, etc. it’s like someone took half your blu-ray shelf and shoved it into one app.
so yeah, people freaking out? understandable.
the biggest panic is about theaters.
you see a lot of takes like: “this is it. netflix hates cinemas, they’ll choke them out, and by 2040 we’ll have like 300 arthouse screens left and that’s it.”
i don’t fully buy the apocalypse version.
here’s why: netflix didn’t spend a ridiculous amount of money just to flex on theaters. these warner movies – your dunes, your batmans, your wizard stuff – make real money at the box office. hundreds of millions, sometimes close to a billion. if they suddenly stopped putting those in theaters and dumped everything straight to streaming, they’d be burning that cash and gambling that subscriber growth and price hikes could magically plug the hole.
and we’ve already seen what happens when streaming companies over-promise and under-profit. investors get mad. stock tanks. the “growth at all costs” era is basically over. so from a pure money perspective, it would be pretty dumb for netflix to say: “no more theatrical, ever” for big tentpoles.
what’s more likely is something messier: big event films – dc, dune sequels, anything massive in the harry potter universe, major hbo spin-offs – will still hit theaters… but with shorter theatrical windows. so instead of a proper three-month run, it might be like 4–6 weeks in cinemas, then straight to netflix. that alone doesn’t kill theaters, but it absolutely changes their diet. they become a place you go for “The Big Ones” instead of somewhere you casually drop into every week.
the real casualty here isn’t “cinema as a concept.” it’s the middle of the market.
this is the part that hurts my film-lover brain the most: the mid-budget stuff.
the $30–70M movies that aren’t guaranteed blockbusters but can turn into magic – your original sci-fi, grounded thrillers, adult dramas, non-franchise comedies, those random films you discover one weekend and never forget. those movies already got squeezed hard by the first wave of streaming.
now imagine being netflix and looking at a script like that. you own dc, dune, harry potter, and a pile of guaranteed IP. are you really risking a mid-budget original theatrical run… or are you throwing that budget into a limited series or “content” that drops straight onto the app and never has to face box-office reality?
so yeah, i don’t think multiplexes vanish completely. but i do think more of them will:
- rely on fewer giant movies
- have emptier weeks between those movies
- close in smaller cities where you need that consistent mid-budget slate to survive
not instant apocalypse. more like slow shrinkage and consolidation. less variety. fewer chances to randomly stumble into something non-franchise on a thursday night.
and that’s just the theatrical side. the thing that genuinely scares me more is what this does to people who make the stuff.
if you think like a director or showrunner for a second, your life is all about: who can i pitch to? how many places can i take this story? who’s competing to buy my idea?
before this deal, there were at least a handful of big players: netflix, disney, warner / hbo, universal, paramount, sony, amazon, apple, and then a web of smaller buyers and indies. not perfect, but there was at least some competition.
merge netflix and warner and suddenly one huge buyer controls:
- a massive chunk of the world’s most recognizable IP
- one of the biggest prestige TV brands (hbo)
- and one of the largest film slates
that’s not total monopoly territory, but it is moving towards “few buyers, many sellers” – which is a nightmare if you’re a writer, actor, or crew member trying to negotiate pay, residuals, or working conditions. we just watched the writers’ and actors’ strikes happen because streaming already nuked the old residual system. now take that fragile situation and hand even more power to a single platform that loves secrecy and hates transparency about viewership.
translation: if you’re not a top-tier name or directing some mega-IP, your leverage probably gets worse, not better.
then there’s the IP thing.
honestly, this is where i feel the “soul drain” the most. because look at what now sits under one roof: dc, harry potter, game of thrones, dune, looney tunes, scooby-doo, cartoon network, adult swim, hbo’s prestige library, plus netflix’s own heavy hitters like stranger things and squid game.
once you owe investors tens of billions back, you’re not thinking, “let’s take wild artistic swings.” you’re thinking, “how many spin-offs, sequels, reboots, prequels, shared universes, and weird crossovers can we milk out of this brand?”
it’s not that good stuff can’t come out of that (we’ve all seen amazing things done with franchise IP), but when everything is IP, everything starts to feel… narrower. like we’re living inside a loop of the same brands, reconfigured in slightly different shapes forever. less risk. less newness. less chance of something like an original barbie-style take or an oppenheimer popping through the cracks because a studio randomly decided to let someone cook.
the games angle is its own mini-story.
on paper, netflix absorbing warner bros games sounds wild: they suddenly own hogwarts legacy, mortal kombat, lego batman, arkham, all of that. that’s a giant w for them on day one.
but netflix’s actual history with games has been… weird. they’ve quietly dropped a bunch of genuinely good titles into the netflix app, barely marketed them, and then pivoted toward cheap engagement-style stuff when not enough people played. so the fear is: do these big, rich worlds turn into glorified “content extensions”? do we get more rushed tie-ins and live-service cash grabs designed to keep you logged into netflix, instead of deep, carefully made single-player games?
best case: they let wb games operate like a real studio and just add some cross-promo. worst case: games become just another tab in the “keep the user scrolling” machine.
now, to be fair, this isn’t a guaranteed straight line to doom.
regulators in the US and EU are very aware that “big tech eats old hollywood” could be a problem. the deal isn’t fully approved yet, and even if it passes, it might come with conditions – like rules about how netflix handles theatrical windows, licensing, or bundling. investors also aren’t as easily hypnotized by “subscriber growth” anymore; if netflix torches billions in box office just to flex on cinemas and the numbers don’t add up, the market will hit them for it.
and whenever big studios retreat, there’s usually a counter-movement. when majors killed their specialty divisions, we eventually got A24, neon, mubi, IFC, shudder… people who actually care about cinema will find ways to sneak movies into theaters, especially in bigger cities and strong local scenes. i don’t think cinema as an experience just disappears. it becomes more niche, more uneven depending on where you live, more event-focused.
so where do i land on all this, as a film kid who genuinely loves sitting in a dark room with strangers and staring at a massive screen?
i don’t think this is “the day movies died.” but it does feel like a big shove in the direction we’ve already been drifting: fewer players with more power; more IP, fewer mid-budget originals; more algorithm, less serendipity; more pressure on workers and less transparency about who’s getting paid.
theaters will still exist, just more as temples for the biggest stuff rather than constant, chaotic playgrounds. streaming will keep dominating, but with one supercharged hydra that now owns a disgusting amount of the stories we grew up with. and if you care about the weird stuff – the personal, the risky, the uncomfortable, the non-franchise – you’re going to have to dig harder and support the people and places still fighting to make and show those movies.
hollywood doesn’t die in one dramatic cut to black. it kind of… slowly reshapes itself around whoever’s holding the most IP and the biggest spreadsheet.
and right now, that might end up being netflix.