Netflix's swallowing of Warner Bros will be the end of Hollywood

Film-making will continue but the merger will threaten theatrical releases and the diversity of movies produced.

- Roy Price

The writer says a Netflix merger with Warner Bros would create a monopsony problem: too few buyers with too much bargaining power. Writers, directors, actors, showrunners, puppeteers and visual effects artistes are all suppliers.

(PHOTO: AFP)

For a century, people have been predicting the death of Hollywood. Television would kill it, then home video, then the internet, then streaming, then artificial intelligence. The predictions were always premature. Hollywood always reinvented itself and kept going.

But if Netflix acquires Warner Bros, this long-prophesied death may finally arrive, not in the sense that film-making will cease but in the sense that Hollywood will become a system that circles a single sun, materially changing its cultural output. All orbits — every deal, every creative decision, every creative career — will increasingly revolve around the gravitational mass and imprimatur of one entity.

The danger here is not annihilation but centralisation. Netflix is the No. 1 premium streaming service. Warner Bros is one of the most successful of the legacy film studios and HBO has long been the premier brand in prestige television. These are not middling players; they are two of the main pillars of the modern entertainment industry.