From a British perspective I can only look at America right now in total despair. It’s like watching the Soviet Union in the mid 1990s. The film industry is under a huge amount of pressure at the moment from all angles – now the last remaining great Hollywood studio is being offered for sale – Warner Bros. It’s the closest thing yet to putting the entirely of Hollywood up for sale. Cinema is not safe with Larry Ellison, if he gets his way.
The streaming tech giant Netflix is in the blue corner with a massive 82 billion dollar offer that was expected to be accepted by shareholders but Larry Ellison of Oracle is now circling Warner with a hostile takeover bid promising to “finish what we started” – make no mistake, this is the end for cinema as we know it.
Ellison has already hoovered up Paramount in August of this year, handing control to his son David in an act of pure nepotism.
Before we directly address the facts I want to get my opinion out there about the shocking state of affairs film finds itself in with the Warner Bros buyout. You can also read the official Netflix statement of intent here.
What follows is an opinion piece, nevertheless containing factual evidence…
It is one thing for Hollywood to be sold down the river to a tech giant like Netflix, the biggest single factor in movie theatre decline ever, but to have the US President interfere in favour of an oligarch friend Larry Ellison is plainly un-American, it isn’t capitalism, it’s straight out of the Russian playbook for a mafia state and totalitarian dictatorship. Some would even go so far as to call it straight up fascism, that Ellison may be in the position to create a monopolistic media so he can control the average American and dictate the public discourse. Where exactly Harry Potter and Barbie come into it is anyone’s guess but I recommend seeking out the 1980s book by Neil Postman: Amused to death, available at all good bookshops until it’s taken away and burnt.
According to reports in the reputable British media including the BBC, Trump is threatening to veto the proposed Netflix takeover of Warner Bros by bending the arm of the competitions and mergers authorities so they will only approve a sale to Ellison, and nobody else.
Of all the corruption hiding in plain sight that my friends in the US have witnessed this year I think this is the most audacious, there is no attempt to hide it at all.
And we’re all sitting around with the popcorn out as if it’s some sort of reality TV show. The public discourse on this has been as usual – pathetic. As if it’s a sport.
Ellison is in my opinion nothing but a wannabe oligarch. He must have buttered up Trump something wild with all that AI claptrap because the two geriatrics seem to be closer than Stalin and Mussolini, presumably there’s more to this in terms of just a bromance, what sort of payback there is for Trump… one can only speculate.
Larry Ellison is also now the owner of Paramount studios. The competitions authority under Trump doesn’t seem to be bothered by that. Funny! Paramount are pretty much second only to Warner as far as massive US media giants go. It’s laughable that any sane competition regulator would allow Paramount/Skydance/Oracle to buy Warner.
It’s a “family business” in so much as like all good oligarchs there’s his son in charge of Paramount as if it’s a fucking Soviet Union oil conglomerate or something from the Murdoch / FOX NEWS empire.
And this matters for filmmaking more than you think, for Ellison is a key proponent of AI and will want as much AI slop as possible to be made if he gets his way.
As the most important of all the remaining Hollywood studios, what an unedifying spectacle to have this tug of war between big tech and big mafia. But that’s what happens when you have shareholders with no principals.
With all these nice people fighting over cinema and Hollywood like vultures, there’s one loser in all of this and that’s film, for this is the death knell of traditional theatre. The human way – movie theatres, cinema in general, nights out of the house, literature for their ordinary man… they are are going to become niche legacy activities consigned to history because one suitor Netflix wants you all to stay in, eat shit and get cancer, and the other one wants you all to be in a daze of fascist propaganda because that’s the only way a billionaire gets to become a trillionaire. To these soulless human calculators, that’s the only thing life is about… that and human sex trafficking because they can’t find any satisfaction in their private lives either.
The bidding war – if you can even call it that – is not even a battle for Hollywood’s film industry future, because it doesn’t have one – this is for the IP, franchises and brands that underpin much of modern Western culture. There’s incredible amounts of money at stake.
In ‘normal’ capitalism shareholders get to decide which bidder will fatten their pockets the most and offer the biggest opportunity for future growth so they can get fat now and even fatter in the future. But with fat bastard Trump acting shadow puppet to the government regulators because of the collapse of American democracy, he is the singular entity who has the final say on who wins this bid… And they can’t let a “woke” company like Netflix get the crown jewels can they? Harry Potter, Marvel Universe, the lot…
I hope these shareholders go and do the right…… Nah. It’s not even worth suggesting is it? Culture before profit? Cinema first, making a cheap buck second? Fucking come off it… They’re Americans.
Talent exodus incoming
But there is one thing that artists can do about it, and that is for all of Warner’s top talent to finally put their long ostrich like necks on the chopping board of virtue.
James Gunn, all those woke producers, director Joseph Kosinski of F1 movie fame, Gal Gadot, Ezra Miller, Henry Cavill comic book hero slop extraordinaire, they should all put career second for the first time in their lives and put cinema first.
The answer is for them to do what Christopher Nolan did 3 years ago. Leave.
Nolan, saw the writing on the wall. Warner and the stream giants like Netflix were getting closer and closer, their shit values more and more aligned over bringing cinema to the smartphone screen first, movie screen second. So he said to them – I’m leaving, and he took the Oppenheimer script with him.
Oppenheimer was a 950 million dollar hit, and it could have been a Warner Bros picture.
Nothing hurts an executive shiteater more.
Nothing gets to a shareholder like a good old exodus of employees at a high level – after all, they matter.
So it is time for you all to do the right thing and state clearly your objection sir, to the Ellison buyout, and air your objections sir and madam to the sweeping destruction that AI filmmaking will bring to film crews and jobs. I am not saying there should be another damaging Hollywood strike, all that’s needed is for a few top names to take a stand – and hurry up about it.
If the Netflix deal is approved, and it’s looking very unlikely now – it has to also be on the terms of the top talent at Warner. Protect jobs, especially in CGI, restrict the use of AI, and preserve the movie theatre experience for the next generation.
Perhaps then democracy still has a fighting chance, and the film industry a future.
