All I can say is welcome back to torrenting. This perpetual "same shit deal for consumers, different corporation" problem doesn't end until copyright kicks the media into public domain. Until then, you can play their content reindeer games[1] or you can download a copy of Reindeer Games[2] and watch it without worrying about ownership foofaraw.
The problem here isn’t as simple as torrenting. It’s the narrowing of what culture is created and promoted and what isn’t. Paramount is overtly a right wing organization now under the Ellison’s. Part of their bid to WB is “it’d be a shame if trump killed this deal of yours”. Netflix’s groveling or Paramounts success might mean we see less art critical of the government and more that panders to its interest
And that’s before we’ve even touched HBO. John Oliver is probably the most obvious example. But I’d say shows like Watchmen count too. Fahrenheit 451. Succession was pretty clearly mocking FOX News and its media ecosystem.
Art that’s critical of the government doesn’t literally have to be shouting “Trump bad”, it can be done through critique or mocking of the values it holds.
The failed merger and similar clawback clause between Kroger and Albertsons is currently destroying a significant part of the supply chain for food in the Pacific Northwest. Grocery stores that have been open for 50-75 years - stores where whole neighborhoods and towns were built around - are closing forever, leaving those areas as food deserts.
Either way, this entertainment merger is going to get ugly. Consumers are absolutely going to get harmed either way with that clawback clause.
Except you need food to live and tv shows are an artificially scarce resource that's actually free to distribute in unlimited quantities, so the harm is very different.
You will still have Amazon, Apple, Paramount, Disney, and NetMax spending billions each on content and streaming and Sony being the mercenary creating content for the highest bidder.
WB under Discovery was already becoming an also ran and more financial engineering than a real company.
Seems like a bad example. The problem with Episode 8 was not lack of creativity. Episode 7 was a complete retread of "A New Hope" and a bigger offender. At least blue Jedi milk is new.
I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison, groceries that sell food on one hand and a brainwashing and propaganda delivery system (see History of criminal, industry/advertiser, FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and foreign nation direct ties to the industry) masquerading as “entertainment” on the other.
You don’t have to be “harmed”, just do not pay them your money. Problem solved. If the prospect of not being “entertained” fills you with anxiety and frustration, maybe that’s something to reflect on.
That makes no logical sense. So if I give up my “entertainment” subscriptions because the execs need their bonuses and drive the prices up to compensate for the penalty, causing me to think about how to spend quality time with my family paying games, reading books, and doing activities; is equally harmful as if I can’t but groceries in my town because the grocery store was closed?
> a brainwashing and propaganda delivery system (see History of criminal, industry/advertiser, FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and foreign nation direct ties to the industry) masquerading as “entertainment”
I'm sorry, you appear to have dropped your tinfoil hat. Here it is.
Isn't this submission about Warner Bros Discover, which is a different entity? Seems to be about TV, not movies. But maybe I misunderstand, I did spend a whole of 20 seconds to skim the article...
That’s not correct. Paramount wants everything (including the parts Netflix wants). Netflix wants just tv and movie studio. So the paramount hostile bid would be for the part Netflix wants and the part they don’t.
The article bullet point referencing WB Discovery could mislead some into thinking that this takeover is only for the Discovery portion, but that's not the case. $30 would not be for Discovery only (as Netflix's bid is $27.75), it's for the whole kit and caboodle. Yes there are two entities, but/and Paramount wants it all, and the takeover intent is for both.
I've heard that what Kushner wants is CNN. If they could make CBS+CNN lean conservative like Fox, they pull off a potential to swing the country via news media.
I think that's over-simplifying it. Some YouTube personality (or whatever we want to call 'online media' that isn't just CNN's website) isn't going to be getting a Whitehouse press pass anytime soon.
Oh, they absolutely are. As Leavitt promised at her first briefing, it’s been opened to: "independent journalists, podcasters, social media influencers, and content creators."
You haven’t read about what’s going on at the Pentagon wanted the press to sign a release saying only approved content could be published? It was so onerous that even Fox News refused to sign. Now the press Corp is basically a bunch of right wing influencers.
It might be. But if you're doing a short-term political power play (rather than a business investment), it could be a good tactical spend. And it might be a smart business investment if the political power play works in such way that you can politically bend the business environment in your favor.
No, Newline was its own division of WB, but during the financial bubble bursting, and shortly after Golden Compass lost $100M they gutted it and drastically reduced their scope of operations. It's still technically its own division but now it's more of a sock puppet.
The Hobbit for instance is a WB production, not Newline.
Apparently sometime shortly before they got the axe they paid Susanna Clarke a 7 figure sum to option Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I don't know a whole lot about options but 7 figures sounds like about 8-16x what people usually do especially for a 3 year old book by an unknown author. IIRC, that's more than Andy Weir got for The Martian. And more than Lev Grossman is worth today, and he got five seasons out of three books.
That option expired unused and BBC One and Cuba Pictures made it into a very good miniseries. Does feel a bit like a pattern of financial exuberence.
The BBC Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell miniseries is excellent. One of those times (others might include the original LOTR films and early Game of Thrones) where a genre adaptation wildly exceeded my expectations.
Yeah I'm pretty glad Newline biffed that one since we got this instead.
Also Clarke has a chronic illness, which is preventing her from trying for another book of that caliber. That mountain of cash is probably keeping her very comfortable.
That's conventionally called "studios+streaming" because the Warner Bros studio/brand is one of WBD's crown jewels. The way you've written it, someone could infer everything but HBO Max was going into "other." That's incorrect.
No. Breakup fes are for when the buyer backs out or theere are external forces that prevent the merger. You can also have a breakup fee if the buyee wants out but that's a different thing. In this case it's Paramount saying "we'll up out government-blocks-the-sale fee from $2.xbn to $5bn" which is saying they have a lot of confidence the merger will go through.
> in this case it's Paramount saying "we'll up out government-blocks-the-sale fee from $2.xbn to $5bn" which is saying they have a lot of confidence the merger will go through
No.
Paramount has nothing to do with these numbers, which both come from the Plan of Merger among Netflix, Warner and others [1].
Paramount's bid constitutes an Acquisition Proposal under § 6.2(c). It is a "proposal, offer or indication of interest" from Paramount, a party who is not "Buyer and its Affiliates," which "is structured to result in such Person or group of Persons (or their stockholders), directly or indirectly, acquiring beneficial ownership of 20% or more of the Company’s consolidated total assets."
Given it "is publicly proposed" after the date of the Plan of Merger and "prior to the Company Stockholder Meeting," it is a Company Qualifying Transaction (8.3(D)(x)).
If 8.3(D)(y) is then satisfied (a condition I got bored jumping around to pin down–if thar be dragons, they be here) and Warner consummates the Company Qualifying Transaction or "enters into a definitive agreement providing for" it (8.3(a)(D)(z)(2), the Buyer can terminate the Plan of Merger under 8.1(b)(iii). That, in turn, triggers the Company Termination Fee of $2.8bn, which is separate from the Regulatory Termination Fee of $5.8bn Netflix would have to pay Warner if other shit happened.
I just realized that the netflix ceo is a big-time democratic party donor, and that paramount is supposedly being supported by larry ellison (big-time republican/trump donor) and saudis? I'm sensing a strong political/influence angle here by the billionaires.
Russia seems to be the template here, not the warning. Draw out the Russian oligarchies and if things keep going in the same direction you can probably map them to the equivalent in the US in a few years.
russia doesnt have oligarchs for 15 years at least, it has the opposite of it. Oligarchs control the big chunks of economy, media and have a lot of political influence direct and indirect. What they have right now is some friends of the dictator who own something until dictator allows them.
The closest US has to olugarcha is Bezos and Musk, but they dont have each their own party and a few poket ministers in addition to owm bank and 20ish percent gdp.
I think we are well into uncharted territory. One thing's for sure - here be dragons. I'm sure the US version of oligarchy will come in its unique flavor. Probably people won't even fall out of windows! That mode of "suicide" is maybe distinctly Russian.
My man, you don't have to mince words here. This hostile bid is backed by Jared Kushner, who is the President's son in law. One Rich Asshole owns Paramount, and is most certainly supporting the bid here.
This deal would also leave CNN in a very vulnerable position (they are owned by WB), which is exactly what Trump wants.
More than that, Trump said yesterday that Netflix's purchase of WB "might be problematic" and that he would be "personally involved in the decision of approving it".
Netflix isn't buying CNN though, Paramount can just pick up Discovery on the cheap when its split off. There's no reason for them to even be trying to do a hostile bid either. I think this is just purely an ego/power trip thing.
Netflix and those involved hasn't conclusively metamorphosed into a Larry Ellison-esque state of Lawn Moweriness.
Make no mistake, it (Netflix) is still a billionaire corp; on the humanity scale, it scores quite low, but not lawn mower low. They're still outside the Ellison event horizon.
The most concerning aspect for me is the obvious and conspicuously-timed consolidation of these companies under David Ellison. Within the past few months he's taken control of Paramount, CBS, The Free Press, and now he's working on Warner Bros.
From everything I've seen he's basically an ideologue, and has already re-structured CBS to align with his vision.
Just something that seems very out in the open yet kind of pushed off to the side.
The Free Press wasn't worth anything, it's a blog with marginal readership. The creepy part is that Bari Weiss, a dimwit, was given $200M for that blog, put in charge of CBS News, and made a political commissar of all these new Oracle media properties with the brand names that Boomers love.
This thread is using it as an opportunity to scream about Trump, but Democrats will be all in on this. They have the same funders and the same interests. The NYT is the outlet that legitimized Weiss in the first place, a woman whose only previous interest was claiming that Palestinians were harassing her on college campuses by being there, and trying her best to get them expelled and fired. The Democrats were no opposition to the genocide; it began under their watch, they fully funded and shielded it, and they happily rounded up protesters. They'll be overjoyed to accept Ellison attention and Ellison cash.
I told all of you not to buy Oracle. Awful company, awful people, awful product.
"Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount's hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, according to a regulatory filing."
This is what happens in markets without a functional regulatory body - when the regulator turns into a market participant. It’s closer to a jungle than anything else.
Thank you, I had no idea how this was politically related, and honestly cannot keep track of all the corruption these days anyways. How does anyone? This is pretty much a genuine question.
Viewing this acquisition in terms of simple revenue alone is like positing Musk bought Twitter for its ad revenue. Total information control is priceless.
(In case anyone hasn't kept up with the plutocratic oligarchy in the US: Oracle's Larry Ellison currently owns Paramount (since July 2024), and Warner Bros. Entertainment owns CNN. This isn't explained in the CNBC OP: David Ellison is Larry's son and the token CEO).
Except there is robust competition in media —be it news, social, etc.
I think the political angle in terms of motivation is overstated. In terms of closing the deal though, it’s huge. David Ellison has been producing movies for quite some time. So his desire to become a big time player in that space would be a believable motivation. But he can use his father’s connections to Trump to sink the Netflix bid (or create enough FUD to convince shareholders to favor his bid).
Stage AGs have a strong role to play in anti-trust law. And the other party they're suing _isnt_ a Federal agency this time.
Now maybe nothing matters. But conflicts of interest will come up in those cases. Trump doesn't win _everything_. Trump wins at places where the Supreme Court is using him for their own project of reworking the constitutional order. Basically Trump shoots up a volley with some absolutely batshit PoV, they interpret the topic in some saner (still crazy) right wing legal idea. And the Supreme Court fast track's these cases about executive power.
This case would be State AGs having independent standing to challenge major M&A.
It will drag things out at a minimum, in a way the Supreme Court's rapid resolution of executive branch cases is not dragged out.
I mean it's not even politics in the way most people think about it—like this is just blatant corruption. Trump moved in and said this is my swamp.
We're not even gonna get a good investigative journalism podcast about the corruption because it's just right there in front of you. There's not much to uncover.
All independent agencies are dead, according to SCOTUS fiat. If we want anything to survive they'll have to be rebuilt, either with an enlarged court that won't strike them down again, or as section 1 agencies that Congress has to power directly (which will also be hugely corrupt). Either that or an amendment that creates a branch that straddles the legislative and executive, to be truly independent.
Nah, they are fine. They ate head of presidents office alive last week.
Add: it's also not one anticorruption agency, but the whole bunch of them -- law enforcement one (think of FBI, but investigating corruption in government), special prosecutors office, another agency monitoring assets of anyone close enough to government (including immigration officers on a country level) and their family and a whole separate court with judges vetted by independent panel.
It's elections of Doge of Venice level of indirection.
I think it gives Netflix an advantage. When it comes up in front of a judge he'll note the obvious conflict of interest and Trump's idiotic pronouncements, like the fact that he said he will be personally involved, and rule for Netflix.
This will go to SCOTUS, which typically gives the administration preferential treatment. The US's current level of corruption is way too high to assume your scenario.
HA hardly. Balance that against two of the top four streaming platforms (youtube, hbo, disney, netflix) trying to merge, probably should worry about some anti-trust there, but not under this administration.
They've just about said as much. They thought they had a friendly bid in the works just before WB announced a more exclusive friendly bidding process with Netflix. Definitely some drama going on there.
They tilt like everyone else - maybe the chaos and mayhem behind the last few years of this industry mean the old guard is finally failing, and we'll see meaningful copyright reform and sanity in our lifetime.
Are you betting on the content conglomerate bidding tens of billions, or the nepo baby LBO shop wearing the corpse of a movie studio as a salmon hat to spur copyright reform?
I'm hoping that they're sufficiently absurd in their mere existence to spur questions among the electorate. "Hey, that looks weird, and not right. Maybe we should fix that!"
Paramount broke its tradition of barely treading water [1] in 2023 by booking multibillion cable losses [2] before being acquired in a de facto LBO [3] at half the price it traded at in 2005 [4]. (90% off its 2021 peak, though that may have been meme-y.)
Paramount Skydance–the one bidding for Warner–has $15bn of debt on $600mm operating cash flow supporting $15bn of equity trading above book value while still posting losses [5].
How does one learn to think about companies buying each other. It’s counterintuitive to me for an entity with stock to buy stock in another entity which could itself own stock in the first.
The way you write it I can’t see why WB would be allowed to sell itself when it makes the most sense for Patamount to go bankrupt some time from now and be split up amongst US media; Netflix/HBO/Disney/Peacock
The rest of the world is the one thing that gives me hope in this regard, really.
It feels like year by year, Asia, even China, is becoming more and more culturally relevant. Western media is just too damn stagnant.
Hollywood used to be known as possibly the most important cultural powerhouse history has seen. It might still be that, but it certainly doesn't feel like it anymore.
> My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen.
I feel like at some level, it will be much easier to just pir.... I mean... train LLMs based on their content. Yeah. LLM training. That's acceptable. So it really doesn't matter who wins, we'll just perform LLM training.
Don't be silly. It's only LLM training if you are president's friend and bough the license to import a few BN worth of GPUs from the firm owned by his son in law.
Reading the comments -- it is amazing how quick it takes to from allegedly a democracy governed by a rule of law to a corrupt oligarchy. I personally understand the reasons, but it's a bit "funny" given all the grand-standing before about the founding fathers, checks and balances etc.
I'm curious how often tactics like this work. It is essentially asking the Warner stockholders to act against the wishes of their elected board.
It seems the main thrust of the pitch is "we're friends with Trump therefore more likely to win approval" which is so deeply gross but also probably persuasive to many. Jared Kushner is involved in the Paramount bid so you know they're greasing the right wheels.
Hostile takeovers hit their zenith "in the 1980s" [1], when about 50% of attempts succeeded [2].
Since then, Delaware courts have become more Board friendly (specifically, friendly to takeover defences), antitrust made "it more difficult for companies with large market shares to acquire competitors without some level of cooperation from the target company," and stocks became more expensive [1]. (I'm struggling to find recent literature on frequencies.)
Compared to the 1980s and pre-Covid hostile takeover zenith, stocks remain expensive. But money is chaper, particularly for the politically connected. Antitrust is a wild card. And Warner has reduced takeover defences given it's already in the market for a sale (Revlon duties).
Their case for approval is much stronger than Netflix's regardless of who is president.
Netflix is the largest streaming service in the country right now. It is 4x larger than Paramount+ in terms of total subscribers. Netflix acquiring Warner Brothers is naturally going to receive more scrutiny for this reason alone.
Maybe we're all doing it wrong. Americans could instead be making "donations" to get the legal outcomes they want under this regime. We're not accustomed to the 3rd wold paradigm though it's well established elsewhere.
It's a free market. Just pool some money on kickstarter and bribe the dude to make him do whatever you want. It's the new way to petition. Pool the money, buy his tokens. Make a smart contract that transfers a few mil once the law takes effect.
Do you seriously need a Ukrainian to tell you how to do corruption in the year 2025 of our Lord? In US? In this economy?
Don't be cheap. You can get Roe v Wade back and Kavanaught's head on a pike if you bid high enough. Independent prosecutors will for sure find a pdf file one him somewhere.
Paramount bids $30 all cash for all of Warner Brothers Discovery. Netflix bids $27.75 “for Warner’s studio and HBO Max streaming business” only [1]. (“$23.25 in cash and $4.50 in shares” [2].)
The latter leaves behind “sports and news television brands around the world including CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report (B/R)” [3]. (Paramount is effectively bidding $5.9bn for these assets.)
Note that Zaslav, Warner’s CEO, is a prominent donor to Democrats [4], as is Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder [5]. (Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO with Greg Peters, is mixed, leaning Dem [6]. No clue on the latter.) Ellison is a staunch Trump ally. The partisan tinge will be difficult to ignore.
That says nothing about this particular situation. Written language has been a thing for 5,000 years, and it's used for this bid, so nothing remarkable here ...
I guess the OP is just making an unrelated comment, because it almost sounds like he thinks that a hostile bid is evidence that the US has Ukraine-levels of corruption. Leaving aside the odd time period (Ukraine was much less corrupt pre-war than it was pre-Maidan, not to speak of its other more corrupt neighbor), the fact that hostile bids have been around for a long time in the US is good evidence to suggest that they don't indicate the level of corruption implied by OP. If OP made the same comment under a post about verb conjugation, wouldn't that seem odd to you too?
Or maybe they just happened to make an off-topic comment that had nothing to do with the hostile takeover.
The success of a Netflix>WBD acquisition would consolidate a third of US streaming markets under one roof, which should receive anti-trust scrutiny. Despite this, there is still a strong appearance of conflict of interest in Trump’s public remarks regarding denying Netflix acquisition the necessary regulatory approval, in conjunction with his son-in-law Jared Kushner being one of the financial backers for Paramount’s cash bid.
My guess is that if it went to trial Netflix would win tbh. That’s why Paramount is having to raise its bid substantially, they can’t rely on getting Trump to serve WB up on a platter.
It has really strange bugs like with an hour left of a Champions League match it thought it had reached the end credits of the show and tried to automatically start showing something else. Was confusing figuring out how to tell it I wanted to really watch the "end credits" which was the last hour of the soccer contest.
That's interesting as the Champions League is the most compelling thing for me to consider P+ subscription. Unfortunately for P+ it just hasn't been compelling enough. I feel for the Peacock subscription to watch EPL, but even with that subscription there are matches only on USA and maybe also on Telemundo. I can only imagine P+ doing similar, and I'm just not here for it
Eh, I liked it, but canceled my service after they made a bribe to the current president to approve one of their acquisitions. I like Star Trek plenty, but not enough to support anti-American businesses like Paramount.
I subscribed to SkyShowtime (Euro joint venture from Paramount) for a few months (it was cheap) ... then I realized it doesn't work on Linux... cancelled.
The Paramount+ user interface on my Samsung TV is horrendous.
It frequently crashes after displaying ads, forcing me to re-open the app and watch ads again.
When watching ads does succeed (all 3 minutes of them…) and playback of my show begins, it shows the enormous pause button, the giant fade-to-black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, and covers up the subtitles, as though I had pressed ‘Play’.
And trying to pause requires you to press the pause button TWICE.
I tried to play a series, but instead of starting from the last-played episode + 1, it always plays the most recent episode since it’s a rewatch. This happened every time until I got caught up.
So I strongly disagree. If only to be able to watch all of this content without all of frustrating design flaws.
EDIT: They also end each episode with 2-3 minutes of ads. So you had to exit the show, then re-enter to not get hit with two ad breaks in a row.
IMO no 3rd party app is worth using on those devices.
My parents pay over $300/mo for an Xfinity bundle. It includes everything (phone, internet, and all streaming services on one bill)
The paramount+ app on the Xfinity box took TEN MINUTES to load a show. This is after crashing three times back to the logo.
Xfinity warns that it’s a 3P app and they aren’t responsible for it but it should be criminal to take the money and subject elderly people to this under spec hardware. Even live sports will pause and stutter.
Why for the love of all that is holy are you using the in built smarts of any TV? Well except the Roku TVs are okay. But I still prefer my AppleTV. It has by far the best hardware in the business and supports the volume up/down button and power off of the TV through either CEC or IR.
I have seen several aspects of entertainment in my life get squeezed for money (Magic The Gathering, movies, TV streaming, video games) and I have decided to basically quit any form of entertainment which is solely controlled by large corporations.
People get extremely angry when Magic The Gathering charges more money, for more exclusive products, in more frequently occurring releases. Rage, grief, and sorrow over an aspect of your life that you allow a singular company to control. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can walk away , and find more fulfilling activities that you control.
This is what the kids call “touching grass”.
At this point I don’t watch TV, I don’t watch movies, I don’t play Magic The Gathering, I only play video games over 10 years old.
As I have gotten older I see now that this entertainment is junk food that replaces real satisfaction and accomplishment in life. Humans now more than ever have the opportunity to learn and do anything, but instead they spend it squandered on a shadow of real life.
> As I have gotten older I see now that this entertainment is junk food that replaces real satisfaction and accomplishment in life
A bit too condescending if you ask me. People are free to choose to spend time on things they find entertaining and that has no bearing on whether you find it "junk food" or whether the company producing the entertainment is trying to squeeze every penny they can out of it.
People are given a choice on what they eat as well and many also eat junk food, despite it largely being agreed upon that junk food is not good for you.
Both cheap entertainment and junk food cede your autonomy to large corporations whose main goal is to make you addicted to their product and extract the maximal amount of money.
This is purely subjective, but I believe that the path to personal fulfillment does not involve watching TV and playing video games in your spare time. I say this as someone who was addicted to video games and played 40 hours a week in addition to a full time job.
When someone says “No matter who wins, we lose” they are implying that we are all beholden to corporations who will inevitably screw us, but that does not have to be the case. You can choose not to participate.
As someone who has begun to fall into the "Machine Zone"[1] with gaming and stream watching (and trying to get back out) I'm feeling many of the things you're describing.
I struggle with defining the line for myself because a lot of my own hobbies and goals are creative - making music, building a video game, performing improv comedy. And those things are naturally in want of an audience.
Does it mean that I'm part of the problem in wanting to create entertainment, because I'm essentially asking an audience to indulge in the "junk food" that I create? I don't know.
I'd be interested in your thoughts on that question because your ideas seem to be well-articulated. My current thinking is that there is a distinction between:
- "So good" and "So good I could watch it for hours"
- "The artistic content" and "The platform moderating your access to it"
- "Pro-social" and "Anti-social" encouragement / culture of various media (the medium is the message, etc).
Making good quality, non-addictive, pro-social art, independently seems to be an ideal outcome, but then your art - while also being extremely expensive to create and distribute - is in competition with highly visible, well-established, strongly addictive... McDonald's franchises.
> It doesn’t have to be this way. You can walk away , and find more fulfilling activities that you control.
For some people, they may their particular hobby/form of entertainment a core part of their identity. So walking away feels a huge indictment of themselves in particular. It can be hard for people to find something else to "pivot" their identity to in many cases.
Maybe? Paramount was already deep in shuffling a lot of movies to Paramount+ exclusives, and new parent company Skydance seems to have first-look deals with both Apple TV and Netflix who may or may not ask for movie projects to be streaming exclusive.
(Apple TV is nearly as bad at theatrical runs as Netflix, though admittedly some of Apple's biggest "mistakes" are in presenting things beyond Oscar-bait such as Argyle that "box office flopped", but yet it is far better for physical theaters that they tried and as a fan of physical theaters I want to keep seeing them trying.)
I can’t even use Paramount+ at home. Have network wide ad and tracking filters on (simple NextDNS presets, nothing crazy), and while others work, Paramount+ doesn’t. Makes me wonder what they are doing to get blocked. Kind of wish neither were getting WB.
I've had the same issue and go so far as to remove the streaming stuff from my Pihole to make sure it wasn't a DNS filtering issue. Paramount+ app still is sketchy as hell sometimes. Usually won't work on my AppleTV, but works on phones and stuff.
I thought I read somewhere paramount is in survival mode, avoiding risky projects and focusing on reliable projects. This is surprising indeed.
Amazon took MGM, maybe netflix can take over paramount after it takes over warner bros?
I know people have strong opinions on this, but both from studios like warner and netflix, their quality has been subpar, i don't think this will change much in terms of risk taking. There used to be lots of more flops but lots of really good blockbusters as well. Now there are a lot less of both, it is profitable but enshittified.
Paramount sold themselves to Skydance who now get referred to as Paramount because Paramount is the older, stabler brand. That sale is generally considered to have pulled Paramount out of survival mode, though it will probably be at least a few more quarters before it the results are seen.
(Arguably, Skydance's ideas for Paramount are too similar to the weird Paramount and CBS divorce era, that I find it hard to believe Skydance is less wrong of a steward for Paramount than Paramount was before the consolidation. But a lot of that opinion comes from bias as a Star Trek fan and Skydance's approach seems to return to the semi-broken idea that Star Trek seems to be better as a film franchise than a TV franchise.)
Skydance owning both Paramount and Warner Brothers might be very concerning in terms of IP consolidation alone.
Skydance is also known as the then-obscure company that picked up Pixar head John Lasseter when his reputation for being overly affectionate got him pushed out of Disney.
It's one of the Ellison family's forays into media. David's sister/Larry's daughter Megan has Annapurna. Annapurna produced the Spike Jonze's AI romance "Her" and many of the the most prominent indie games of the last decade (Outer Wilds, Cocoon, Stray, Kentucky Route Zero, Sayonara Wild Hearts, Journey, Donut Country…).
Right. Also the weird part of the Skydance Lasseter drama is not just that is happened once, there, but that it happened at nearly the same time but worse at Annapurna. Annapurna games division that had done so well last decade got purged by rehiring someone to oversee it who had been fired the first time for the "overly affectionate" types of problems just before Annapurna's "Golden Age" and was hired as much to better align the games division with making movie knockoffs rather than producing indie darlings (which was a "distraction" for a company trying so hard to be a movie company). (You can almost excuse "hired someone Disney fired for this reason", but how do you excuse "we already fired once for this reason"?)
The Ellison family's willingness to be tied to serial harassers, and in the case of Annapurna in direct expense of being a beloved media producer, makes you wonder what worse skeletons that family has in its closet if this is already just the open awful stuff they want us to know about their close associates.
David Ellison was an intern at Pixar in college and has a personal relationship with Lasseter. Annapurna games was under his sister and has no management connection to Skydance.
I guess if there is any common denominator it’s a familial default to loyalty vs fear of public perception? Not the worst trait in the world despite leading to this outcome.
Also to be fair Lasseter’s “serial harassment” (while real and I’m not trying to discount) consisted of his insistence that everyone hug him when greeting him. So while you can make the argument his firing had merit, his ”issue” is pretty easy to prevent at a new firm: No hugs policy
Do a quick web search for "lasseter harassment" before posting stuff about it, maybe?
Topmost link on DDG starts with:
"John Lasseter was accused by multiple former employees and reports of a pattern of unwanted sexualized behavior at Pixar and Disney Animation, including persistent unwelcome touching, kisses, and leering that made staff uncomfortable"
> who's gonna produce that once Paramount owns HBO?
Netflix.
If they win, they own HBO. If they lose, they have a beef with Ellison.
(Speaking out of my ass here. But I think there is broad underappreciation of how intensely a lot of Hollywood creatives do not want to work for a rightwinger. I imagine Netflix, Disney and others will have a bit of a bonanza over the coming years of picking up disaffecteds from Paramount et al, even assuming the latter don't wind up in bankruptcy.)
Don't sleep on the A24 or NEON model. I think we'll see a boom in independent film production and distribution companies over the next few years, especially with the inevitable dry powder from either deal.
The best outcome would be for all of the bids to fail, all the streaming services would bleed money due to people sick of the siloing, and for there to be multiple streaming services competing on experience because they all have access to the same catalog.
The second best outcome would be the cartoon villain Larry not getting what he wants.
Which is why the model that would actually be good for consumers and the model that absolutely no content producer wants which is splitting content creation from distribution isn't going to happen. Let a bunch of companies compete over being the best streaming platform and then let those companies all compete for licensing deals for content.
I think a big copyright holders in a strange way actually don't want a repeat of cable. They want all content to be exclusive by default to their own streaming service.
When you make something (eg TV shows), you might also want a direct relationship with your customer (eg viewer). Consequently, A platform where you get to choose how to present and celebrate the stories seems like a reasonable thing.
In the US, the film industry originally worked like the streaming industry does today. Besides just creating films, the major studios distributed them through the theaters they owned. If you wanted to see a Paramount film you had to go to a Paramount owned theater, if you wanted to see an MGM film you had to go to an MGM owned theater, and so on. In 1948, this distribution scheme was ruled to be in violation of antitrust law and the studios were forced to divest themselves of their theaters. Now you can see major films in any studio and the theaters have to compete on price and amenities. I don't see why the same logic shouldn't apply to streaming services.
I want Netflix to lose. After living with their binge release schedule for however long now I think we're all worse off for it. So I want less of the industry to use it.
You don't need the streaming service though, you can just do without or find other methods of obtaining their content. It's not like food, electricity, or water where you may have no actual options or very limited options. Movies and shows are wants, not needs, and people can walk away and fill the time some other way.
Saying everyone should just quit streaming and go touch grass or read a book is not a productive recommendation. It's been tried for decades and fails because people really like TV and Movies. Given that, the discussion here needs to start from the assumption that people will continue to watch TV and movies and suffer meaningful quality of life impacts when they do not.
Once Netflix buys all of these companies, you won't ever be able to watch a WB movie without a $25 netflix sub per month. (and yeah, when they are done buying all the competition that's what the monthly will be.
> Once Netflix buys all of these companies, you won't ever be able to watch a WB movie without a $25 netflix sub per month. (and yeah, when they are done buying all the competition that's what the monthly will be.
That's kind of a silly argument. "People are better off paying $100+/month for 4+ streaming services than $25/month for one that has everything."
If your argument were that you'd have to pay more than the current combined cost, it'd be a better argument against mergers. Arguing against something because it's a better deal is just strange.
It's not that silly of an argument when you factor in Blu-Ray as the other side of "won't be able to watch a WB movie without". Right now the only Netflix "Exclusives" you can find on Blu-Ray are the ones they source from Sony, Warner Brothers, or Paramount. If they own Warner Brothers one of those Blu-Ray sources goes away.
Instead of a one-time Blu-Ray purchase for ~$25 for a movie to watch as many times as you'd like, it's an ongoing subscription for $25/month. If you only want to watch that one movie in two different calendar months, you've easily doubled your spend.
(Yes, it is still apples-to-oranges because you may watch more than one movie in a month, but the flipside is that the $25/month is a variable catalog fee. The movie you want to watch may be "vaulted" that second month you want to go watch it. With Blu-Ray you control your film catalog, with Netflix some finance team does.)
(Also, yes, easy to forget Blu-Ray in this debate because Blu-Ray is dying/dead, especially in physical retail with Target and Best Buy dropping its sections. You can also substitute a lot of the same arguments here with arguments for Movies Anywhere and/or iTunes Store.)
thats not how most people do streaming, they consume everything on netflix - when the content gets stale, they cancel, move to P+, consume for a few months, stale, d+, stale, A+, etc....
1 at a time
I'm never paying any of them, anything, ever again, but I'm sure we'll all get a little fucked somehow. I do hope it triggers more in-fighting amongst the scum of the earth.
[1] https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/reindeer-games
[2] predb.me
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