Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know).
From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.
I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
In 2009 a Turner Broadcasting executive stood in front of employees and said they are not worried about Online streaming because it only covered 15 minutes of watching time among consumers. TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, HBO, Time Inc were all under the same ownership umbrella along with the entire MGM catalog Ted Turner had acquired at the cost of losing control of his company. There were executives who knew what they were doing but some were performative - using buzz words and bravado to hide that they had no idea. Many were trying to extract as much as possible from both ends - 50% of revenue from consumers and 50% from advertisers. Even when those two were in direct conflict with each-other’s interests. They believed content was king and so they invested in content, instead of distribution. They hoarded their back catalog for years.
In the mean time Netflix started with 3 CDs per month plans and when they began streaming on 2007 we didn’t use it at start because we assumed that it would cut out of the 3 movies allotment. So we were scared to use it for a while. Yet we used it regularly - because unlike the cable service, streaming didn’t have ads. And ads were massive massive abuse and waste of time for consumers. You can benchmark the level of abuse by the types of ads in the super bowl: Alcohol, crypto, gambling, cars…
The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads. Mix the two and you lose the golden goose.
That said, the bravado of that executive stuck with me since then.
> [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.. Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation.. cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art.
> [Pre 1990s] The Paramount Consent Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to break creative industries into a three-tiered structure: production, distribution, and retailing. Producers were prohibited from vertically integrating into the traditional distribution business. That way, there are fewer conflicts of interest in the content business; producers had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art. Policy removed power as the mechanism of competition, and emphasized art..
> We should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. We should probably ban predatory pricing so Netflix isn’t dumping into the market. And we should probably begin a radical decentralization of chains and studios. This is all possible. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.
Not sure how many of you have WBD shares with its rather tumultuous past (spin off from ATT, the Bill Hwang mess), but if you've picked up shares on the cheap in the past few years sub $10, congratulations.
"Under the terms of the agreement, each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in shares of Netflix common stock for each share of WBD common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. "
I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming?
Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
This deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film & TV production.
Hollywood's struggles amplified after the writer's strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east.
Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East.
Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already.
In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over.
The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.
It's always great to read about how the people the own the means of distribution aquire also the means of production, trying to create a meta-monopoly. /sarcasm
I'm rooting for someone on the regulary side disliking all the crap that Netflix produces, and just shuts the whole thing down. Those 5 billion they'd have to pay for a breakup fee in that case would have me feeling better that I couldn't cancel their service, since my family pesters me to keep it.
As long as David Zaslav is kicked to the curb instead of given power inside Netflix, this could still be a win for the world. I don't know how else we were going to get him out of there.
Heck, Netflix might actually promote Our Flag Means Death!
(HBO being so terrible at modern promotion is what ultimately got them to this place. I found multiple series I really enjoyed there, but always by total accident scrolling alphabetically. The first time I ever saw a promotion for Warrior was when it came to Netflix.)
Consolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show. Then every studio got greedy and spawned their own platform, forcing netflix to produce their own shows.
Now you have 20 tv networks all with their own subscription and all losing money.
Does anyone who's participated in M&A know how they come up with a breakup fee? I believe this one is $5 Billion (per Bloomberg), and Adobe <-> Figma was $1 Billion.
Interested to understand the modeling that goes into it.
> Combination Will Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community and Generate Shareholder Value
No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they're writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?
The cycling fans among us were quite bashed around over the past few years getting access to cycling coverage in Europe. The were the glory years where GCN Plus was extremely cheap (it was too cheap) and the coverage was ad-free and excellent. Then we got bashed around to Eurosport which was fine, more expensive but still ad-free. Then we got moved to Discovery+. They weaseled out of their ad-free coverage for a bunch of races and jacked up the price because they bundled the cycling in with football and we suffered a price hike from $3-5 per month to $30+ a month, yes a 1000% hike, over the past 5 years.
This was a very foolish choice on Netflix's part. Most if the iconic IP from WB/HBO has gone down hill in a dramatic fashion over the last decade.
Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but half way through the fans started dropping almost as quickly as main characters. DC movies have had very few genuine successes, even if they've technically turned a profit.
Putting all that content up on Netflix would be unlikely to pull in that many more subscriptions, and would require dropping the existing streaming service(s) and agreements to allow for exclusivity.
This doesn't bring significant talent or IP to Netflix, it's just an attempt to grab market share. I doubt they'll try to move anything out of WB/HBO's existing streaming platforms or agreements. This just looks like an attempt to increase profits by simply buying a profitable company and letting them mostly continue to function with minimal changes.
In other word, this probably isn't the worst acquisition possible for consumers, but it certainly won't improve life for anyone to let it happen, and it does consolidate market share and control when it comes to media. This probably won't be hugely evil, but it won't be good either.
When all is said and done there’s going to be a few players left and they’re all going to be American by the current looks of things. You could argue movies were already like this, but for television that’s quite the change as most countries had many television production companies and stations.
Now it seems like they’ll be a few global media companies and maybe some local production houses that have to sell their stuff to these guys or setup their own services like the BBC does with iPlayer in the UK, with somewhat limited success compared to these giants.
The offer makes sense if you don’t treat as a straightforward attempt to buy WBD. The proposal itself creates advantages long before the deal closes.
What matters:
- Strategic signaling: Submitting a bid instantly places Netflix in the same acquisition arena as Amazon and Apple. In other words, it’s good PR.
- Access to real diligence: A signed agreement gives Netflix a look inside WBD’s business. Even if everything falls apart, the information has value.
- Pressure on competitors: The bid forces others to act or sit still. Netflix gets to watch how serious each player is.
- Reverse fee as escape valve: A large break fee functions like insurance. If regulators turn the deal into a grind, Netflix can pay the fee and walk away without carrying the wreckage.
- Positioning for the aftermath: If the process damages WBD’s stock and the deal collapses, Netflix has a cleaner path to revisit individual assets later.
- Regulatory posturing: Even if the deal never closes, the offer forces agencies to treat Netflix as a potential consolidator. By proposing to buy all of WBD, Netflix shifts the Overton window by anchoring the conversation at “full acquisition.” Whatever pushback Netflix gets now becomes the map for every deal it tries later.
All of this happens before a single regulator approves anything.
The reverse fee is the cost of the offer, which is roughly 1 percent of Netflix’s market cap.
In practice, that’s the price of buying information at scale, along with the PR and regulatory positioning that come bundled with the offer.
This is the strategy for all companies that have lots of risk in their business. The media industry has a lot of risk. Too many failed projects can sink a studio. The only way to guard is to increase in scale across different types of media and channels so your environment is diversified
It’s no different from vail buying up all the ski resorts because they have such global reach they can diversify income streams across a wider set of mountains that have variable quality in winter and there for one bad winter doesn’t sink the whole business because they own so many - the ones that have a good year offset the ones that have a bad one
Same thing with media. A wider range of projects from a wider range of talent increases the chances of discovering the next hit show or gold mine movie property and offsetting all the projects that fail.
The other thing to remember is bigger companies turn slower and adapt to disruption slower. So it also opens up an opportunity in 5-10 to disrupt.
My wife and I have been so fed up with the streaming landscape that we’ve been amassing a library of physical Blu-rays on the cheap from places like McKay’s, etc. It takes a little work, but it’s been really good for our family and encourages us to be thoughtful about what we consume.
Honestly I don’t see us going back to streaming. The content isn’t that compelling; most of what we watch is older (we have kids, so lots of Disney movies), and we’re not really interested in most of the newer shows that would warrant us paying a subscription in order to watch new episodes as they drop. Before we cancelled, I remember looking at the carousel on my Netflix Home Screen and being completely uninterested in any of the content they were pushing.
I’m also not worried about some licensing deal nuking one of my kids’ favorite movies from the catalog now. No ads is just the cherry on top.
This should never have been allowed to happen by the regulators, but in this administration there are no checks, it’s a free for all and Netflix knows it. It saw the opportunity and went for it
Really conflicted on this one. On the one hand, having to pay for N+1 streaming services because none of my N favourite shows are on any one of them sucks. On the other hand, monopoly.
This is going to be an off the wall statement given this audience, but WWE signed an exclusive deal with NetFlix for 10 years I think in an effort to counter their main competitor AEW, which signed a deal with HBO Max shortly before that. Now they'll both potentially be on the same platform, which WWE will hate as it will be interesting in having two competitive pro wrestling promotions on the same platform.
The most realistic acquirers were Paramount/Skydance or Netflix. Paramount/Skydance is a relatively new-ish entity with David Ellison (Larry's son) as CEO. The general sense in Hollywood is Paramount/Skydance will do little high-brow, art house or awards-fodder films but they will at least distribute films primarily to theaters (they promised to release at least 14 Warner films per year to theaters if their bid was accepted).
Netflix is mostly uninterested in theatrical distribution so the main practical impact of this most of us see day to day may be less theatrical release movies and probably fewer higher budget films being made at all.
Caveats include that the deal has to actually get regulatory approval in the U.S. and EU and survive potential (inevitable?) shareholder lawsuits. Netflix's offer reportedly involved less cash and more debt. Paramount/Skydance argued regulatory approval and the heavy debt made Netflix's offer less attractive than their own despite Netflix's higher top-line price.
2023: "A Party in Cannes Announces a New Hollywood Power Player". Something like ~300 attendees, probably $10 million. Zaslav and Graydon Carter co-hosted. There were rumored to be thousands of bottles of Dom champagne, which is probably inexpensive in bulk.
I know the guideline about complaining about site display and rendering, but there’s more to this one, I promise.
This gives a CloudFront 403 error when loaded from a Mullvad VPN endpoint in the US.
How can I vote with my wallet for privacy support from a vendor when there are only a few vendors and they all block VPNs? This is bigger than Netflix, bigger even than streaming media.
I fear that we are very rapidly advancing to a point where you can’t use any of the “normal internet” and the mass-appeal normie services without doing full identification with some unique identifier. For most apps, it’s your phone number (which is 1:1 with a person and these days never changes). For websites, it’s going to be your residential home (IP) address.
I’m glad I downloaded all the movies I’ve ever cared about and have local copies of 100% of them. I doubt I’ll be permitted to use any of these services that stream them now, even if I wanted to.
On one hand it is good that the maybe the streaming will be split into less subscriptions, but on other hand, I think the only way forward is to simply prohibit exclusive streaming rights. I.e. any movie streaming rights should be sold to anyone who wants to buy them for the same price. That is only way to enable competition in streaming.
I hope that this means that the Netflix app on AppleTV will finally become a “first class citizen.”
The Netflix app has always been treated badly by Apple. No idea why, but it means that I can’t have Netflix content in the “What’s Next” queue (among other things, like Netflix actors’ work not showing up in show information).
Does this mean Netflix is acquiring AOL? Can they bring back the internet cd on a magazine cover ? /s anyone remember AOL Time Warner ? Like the biggest company in the world when it merged … is that what Netflix are buying? The former largest company in the world just decade before last?
The reaction here is interesting. I thought this is what people wanted, a consolidation of all the streaming services into one so you did not have to subscribe to 10 different ones. I personally think it's a bad idea, but people need to figure out exactly what they want.
Those acquisition numbers will just keep becoming larger and larger until one day, when I'm old enough, someone will just acquire the only other player left in the field and Earth will be one single megacorporation.
At this rate Netflix isn’t building a streaming service, it’s building a monopoly starter pack. Give it a few more acquisitions and the “Are you still watching?” prompt will legally qualify as a government notice.
The streaming platforms suffer from fragmentation right now: People don't like hopping between a dozen different streaming platforms to consume entertainment - regardless of price or ads. If you give them an option for a single place where all their media is, they will use it, regardless of what is happening behind the scenes.
They will never all merge into one because of regulatory pressure and because they are competitors.
It seems nice to have one less streaming platform in some ways, but it's not a pathway forward.
I'll continue to use Jellyfin with a few hard drives.
I'm a fan. Injecting a huge catalog into Netflix is a win for consumers who want just one subscription. And injecting studio talent into Netflix (assuming the merge gives WB creatives influence) can only help.
HBO's tech sucks. Apple is (in my experience) hard to get running in the Android ecosystem. Most of the other options are too narrow in catalog, or ad ridden.
Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
I was in one seminar, and someone asked a question about future to Harish Mehta (one of the founder of NASSCOM), and he said that big companies will become bigger for at least next 10 years.
Netflix should buy a theme park and make a rival to Disneyland. Call it Westworld... put a Westworld area, Harry Potter area (make the Hogwarts train like the monorail), Dune area, Lord of the Rings areas (Shire, Rivendell, Gondor, Mordor), DC comics area (Gotham, Metropolis), Game of Thrones areas, etc. So many other properties from Cartoon Network to add for kids. So many other areas to expand on with the IP from WB if Netflix wants to.
I feel like when I was growing up, I learned about how monopolization was bad for society when it came to industries like steel and rail. but for some reason in the 21st century we've decided that maybe corporations are somehow... better citizens or something? despite the evidence?
Obviously, the reason it's gotten this bad is that lobbying is legal and private campaign funding is mandatory. Thanks again, citizens united!
I loved Netflix when they had the DVD service and the recommendation competition because it actually suggested shows I would enjoy.
Once they started producing their own stuff, recommendations no longer worked: they just promoted whatever crap they produced themselves. And with that, trying to find a show I wanted to watch became so much effort that I canceled altogether. Same goes for all the other streaming services.
In terms of people who actually like movies and music it’s not a great time.
Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the true business model of music and content streamers is about “putting something on in the background” and not actually about the quality level of the content.
Thus you get inoffensive cheap netflix series and AI generated chill beats to study to, and no one really notices as long as it’s above a certain quality threshold.
And this isn’t exactly Netflix’s problem- they know what their users want. When you’re cooking dinner it doesn’t make much difference to you if it’s a Judd Apatow romantic comedy and one that’s some Hallmark knockoff romcom bullshit.
I’m not really sure how to solve the problem of this very siloed video content landscape. No one wants to subscribe to 4 streaming services.
I would think the original netflix model of being mailed bluray discs might be viable, but without independent studios like Warner around, why would anyone produce physical media?
R.I.P to the quality of HBO shows and looking forward to slow burn shows getting cancelled more now. HBO has been going through a really bad phase recently ha. With Discovery, WB and now this. Is it too much to hope that the quality of content won't drop to Netflix level? I just hope the "give writers the time and resources" mindset of HBO doesn't change
I just hope they won't destroy sagas like they did to the Witcher. In other words, I don't think this is good for future content as there is a risk movies/series will follow the same scripts, underlying story plots, cultural norms, same cinematography, etc. Quality going down.
Moreover, this also means more time for ads to pay for this merger.
It seems like the demise of the possibility of great art in the next 50 years. Maybe my bias I find everything made by Apple or Netflix almost perfect but not it. Every moment is curated for maximum something, but not the feeling I get I used to get, even with filler episodes in between.
I didn't really understand why they'd want this, but I think now its strategic protection from someone else consolidating with them. One company with that huge of a library could put a lot of pressure on them by withholding content and with their competing unified streaming service.
Netflix will adapt AI-driven Streaming on demand content. But, critically, it will now be backed up by the entire IP catalogue of WB. Wanna watch a new Superman movie where he meets Harry Pitter? Ok. Wanna see the Matrix as an animated version that includes the Flintstones? Ok.
Oh cool, knock-on price hikes across not just the streaming industry, but all the other industries that decided they needed to bundle streaming subscriptions with their products.
Can't wait to pay even more for my cell bill because they give me "free" Netflix!
moviegoing has always been evolving. from kinetoscopes to grand movie palaces to suburban multiplexes. nothing has ever stayed the same for long in cinema.
heck, most theaters used to be continuous program viewing, meaning you’d show up not knowing what was playing, halfway through a movie, cartoon, or newsreel. scheduled viewing was pretty rare until the early 60s, only reserved for tentpole movies like Gone With The Wind or Ben-Hur.
in some ways, where we are heading is back to where we were: tentpole cultural moments like Barbie or Avatar thrive, but the bread and butter of entertainment happens informally, but now at home.
The US government made it illegal for movie studios to own movie theaters to prevent studios from only showing movies in theaters they own. Similar laws need to be passed to force streaming content to be shown on all services.
It’s not my business: could someone shed light on how this would better serve their respective customers, versus keeping them separate.
Or in other words “what will be possible by this merger that isn’t possible now?”
Netflix seems to hate theatrical releases, so I hope this doesn't affect any small cinemas that want to screen older WB titles. I know when Disney bought Fox, it got a bit harder to book films.
Three wishes - looney tunes and animatics full and uncensored. Don't update them for modern sensibilities. No new looney tunes content unless made by very talented people that love the old ones.
So WB buys/merges w/ discovery to break it back off as part of a merger. Seems sort of silly. Curious if this means pretty much all WB/Disc/HBO content will end up on Netflix.
If I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I'd have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.
The gov will block this for the wrong reasons(they want Ellison to win this) but here’s hoping this and Paramount both get blocked, this level of concentration is not good.
Hopefully I'll finally get to see Chernobyl and Game of Thrones. It's virtually impossible outside of US or Europe to legally stream so many movies and series.
The current US admin will probably thumbs up this deal, but they will like face challenges elsewhere. The huge breakup fees seems to hint a high risk of non-approval
As someone who has recently begun exploring physical media, I find this quite disappointing. The volume on 4K Blu-Rays is often low, prices are high, and Netflix isn't doing much to support physical media.
When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression. However, if you're actively watching on a 110-inch projector with an excellent sound system, every little detail becomes clear.
And that doesn't even address the most frustrating part: owning less and less.
I mean, no one needs to become a physical distributor, but it's disheartening that we lack consumer-friendly ownership of entertainment media when it comes to movies. I would love to see something like Bandcamp, but specifically for studios to release their movies to.
> Netflix expects to maintain Warner Bros.’ current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films.
If Netflix is committing to releasing WB films in theaters, I wonder if they’ll also release shows under the WB/HBO label in the traditional weekly format. With the staggering amount of content that just exists and continues to grow, the “release everything at once and make people binge” model has had zero appeal to me. And seems quite detrimental to how the shows are paced — they seem heavily incentivized to end each episode with a cheap cliffhanger
ok. it isn't as if there's been more than a handful of movies worth watching which have been made in the last 10 years. consolidating catalogs of at-best-mediocre platforms isn't going to make things any better or worse.
Whole deal sounds Looney Tunes to me. Though Warner does have a substantial catalog, I dumped Netflix because I wasn't impressed with their offerings. After Paramount took all its toys home with them leaving the platform without Star Trek, I had little reason to stay. I'm not a big TV or film buff anyway.
I haven't been a Netflix user for years, the quality of their stuff went past a level I was no longer comfortable supporting. It became a platform that is designed to keep you watching (literally anything) as opposed to a platform to find interesting/relevant entertainment. So much low quality, low effort content. Wonder which of AI wrong-but-instant answers or Netflix' empty entertainment will contribute more to genpop enshitification.
I once worked for a tech company that bought Warner Brothers, well time Warner. Did not end well for the tech company (AOL). In my opinion at the time, the cultures between the two were so different. Fly by night tech guys making a decent amount of money mixing with people who worked long to get where they were in the content space, plus the commercial internet was “newer” e.g. less established then. As they used to say, content is king. Good luck.
This may be a hot take but maybe some consolidation in this streaming industry is beneficial, might save some people searching for content they want to see only to find they have to pay for another streaming service because right holders decided to launch their own streaming app.
Netflix prices will probably increase though, and they will probably ruin a lot of golden IP like always, so there's that to complain about.
On the news of Netflix acquiring Warner Bros, I’m reminded of how good Netflix has been at innovating their business model.
Over the past 27 years, their business model has changed multiple times and each evolution appears to be in direct response to the bottleneck of growth, from maintaining inventory of DVD to acquiring global streaming rights.
Year /
Business Model /
Bottleneck to Growth
1998 /
Sell DVDs over the internet /
Need to continually replenish DVD inventory,
1999-2006 /
Rent DVDs over the internet /
USPS delivery & return times
2007 /
Stream movies over the internet /
Acquiring US streaming rights to a massive library of movies
2009 /
Start producing movies (Netflix Originals) /
Number of subscribers watching Netflix Originals
2010-2012 /
Global expansion; Canada, South America, Europe /
Maintaining rights globally
This entire Warner Bros saga has just been insanely pathetically sad to watch, because it demonstrates that WB has completely lost touch with reality and that the C-suites at the top have zero innovation or anything else to give at this point. The company has gone through so many megamergers and acquisitions which just added more and more debt to the company that at this point it wouldn't surprise me if Netflix just declares bankruptcy with it or something, because it's a completely lost cause. Of course, the people responsible for this won't learn a thing (even though they're making the exact mistakes of the Cable industry they replaced), and will continue doing the same thing over and over again, because, clearly, learning from mistakes is just not possible for these people.
Nice of them to start the conversations with a probably lie, that it will be less expensive for consumes because they can now bundle HBO/Netflix. Except this has never been true for more than enough time that for people to forget and past the time to change it, if at all. It will be less selection and cost more, like the usual.
Pretty soon all media will be owned by 4 tech billionaires. They have done so well with preserving a free and open internet I cannot see why people are concerned they are gobbling up all the alternative legacy communications platforms.
> Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. Following the Separation of Discovery Global for a Total Enterprise Value of $82.7 Billion (Equity Value of $72.0 Billion)
I know this isn't the main point, but does anyone else find this sentence a nightmare to read? "Bros." makes me think we're in a new sentence; This would be fine if the next word wasn't arbitrarily capitalised. Why do people write like this? Why not just capitalise the proper nouns?
Netflix was a great product innovator for a long time but now that they're running out of ideas they're pivoting to acquisitions.
I guess one big difference is that their direct competitors aren't startups - they're Amazon, Apple, etc. - so perhaps this plays out more as a race to acquire studios, IP, and creative talent.
Then if/when they have a monopoly they'll charge $20 a month and still play ads every 5 min and we'll be back to cable.
I’m really disappointed, because Netflix doesn’t sell any of their content. You have to subscribe.
I own Soprano’s, White Lotus, Batman Movies, etc on regular media, but I can’t get shows like Black Mirror outside of a subscription for the rest of my life.
I really hope they continue to offer physical and digital sales of their media for those who perfer to buy instead of renting.
Paramount, Disney, NBC Universal, etc all still sell their content even though they operate subscription services and I wish Netflix would do the same.
Netflix’s content selection has always felt weaker than traditional studios. Sometimes it even looks like filmmakers take Netflix’s massive budgets but don’t give them the same level of serious, polished work they deliver elsewhere.
So, if Netflix ends up managing Warner Bros or HBO, it’s hard not to worry. HBO and Warner Bros are known for premium, high-caliber content, and Netflix’s track record suggests the overall quality could easily take a hit.
WB was another legacy media empire being run by a megalomaniac hell-bent on destroying their legacy.
I wouldn't normally support this kind of move, but unlike the Skydance deal, Netflix is actually a real company that, like, makes use of IPs and publishes back catalogues.
Things like Looney Tunes will now be in the hands of someone who doesn't hate Looney Tunes.
The sad thing is the WB Studio had a successful year and is healthy.
It's all the other idiotic stuff that's been attached to WB over the years that has broken the business. Time Warner AoL Discovery... is a poster child for what goes wrong when merger after merger happens.
A restructured WB Studio + HBO might be a good business.
I realize this is about money, and it's 2025 right now, and I'm probably just old, but what will happen to quality? I actually laughed, twice, because they did this, twice:
> Beloved franchises, shows and movies such as [list of some of the greatest classics of all time] will join Netflix’s extensive portfolio including [list of laughable junk], creating an extraordinary entertainment offering for audiences worldwide.
And then just a few lines later (and I won't snarkily shorten this one):
> By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies—from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends—with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we'll be able to do that even better.
Like did I really just see Citizen Kane in the same sentence as KPop Demon Hunters? Might as well add Ow, My Balls to the list, that's how jarring the contrast was for me.
I had to stop watching Netflix. Every few minutes, I felt I was taken out of the story by some agenda-pushing content. It's so sad because they are very good at storytelling. I hope they won't enshittify Warner Bros. content too
Couple of unrelated thoughts on this very long thread...
1. I'm sure multiple people have pointed it out, but for all the talk of a bubble, the AOL Time Warner merger was likely the biggest canary in the coal mine for what was to come. History repeats itself with literally the same brand and a lot of the same assets? Sort of depressing if the bubble does now burst because it's like we never learn our lesson
2. Trump wanted the Ellisons because they support him. There's almost no question in my mind the government will fight this. Will they win in court? Hard to say, but my quick thoughts:
If market cap was the basis for antitrust then the answer would be maybe, but that's not the basis for it. Is revenue the basis? No, but Disney generates more than Netflix, so does Comcast, so as a proxy for market share, which I think is somewhat the basis for antitrust (iamaal) it seems like there's no chance this creates some anticompetitive media juggernaut. But then the question is whether streaming is different than more general media. And if it is, how do you define the market when a company like Apple is involved in streaming but not fully a media company? Does that balance things out a bit? I don't think it does because I don't think anyone could claim that Apple counterbalances Netflix in streaming market share. If anything it would be a further argument against Netflix having Netflix and HBOMax.
Now having written all of that, I think the government would win because Paramount streaming with HBO would at least stand a chance in the streaming market against Netflix. And then also increase general media competition because you'd have Disney/ABC, Comcast/NBC, Paramount/CBS with the WBD addition improving Paramount's competitive position relative to the other two.
Any consolidation like this seems like a negative for consumers. But at least it wasn’t bought by Larry Ellison, as was considered very likely (assuming this merger gets approved, in the current administration you never know).
From a Hacker News perspective, I wonder what this means for engineers working on HBO Max. Netflix says they’re keeping the company separate but surely you’d be looking to move them to Netflix backend infrastructure at the very least.
I cancelled all my content subscriptions and I'm back to torrenting. I barely watch anything made my Netflix regardless. I think either Dark or the 3rd season of Stranger Things was the last time. Snyder's SciFi movie wasn't much good either. By now the streaming services are en route to become as terrible as whatever they were set out to replace. Once one of them started heavily advertising their own productions everywhere inside their apps I would've cancelled any remaining subscription at the latest.
https://theonion.com/just-six-corporations-remain-1819564741...
I never imagined that a service that ships DVD via mail would one day buy Warner Brothers. It is amazing how innovation and focus can change the game. Someday a new startup will piggy bank on Netflix and probably buy it later.
In 2009 a Turner Broadcasting executive stood in front of employees and said they are not worried about Online streaming because it only covered 15 minutes of watching time among consumers. TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, HBO, Time Inc were all under the same ownership umbrella along with the entire MGM catalog Ted Turner had acquired at the cost of losing control of his company. There were executives who knew what they were doing but some were performative - using buzz words and bravado to hide that they had no idea. Many were trying to extract as much as possible from both ends - 50% of revenue from consumers and 50% from advertisers. Even when those two were in direct conflict with each-other’s interests. They believed content was king and so they invested in content, instead of distribution. They hoarded their back catalog for years.
In the mean time Netflix started with 3 CDs per month plans and when they began streaming on 2007 we didn’t use it at start because we assumed that it would cut out of the 3 movies allotment. So we were scared to use it for a while. Yet we used it regularly - because unlike the cable service, streaming didn’t have ads. And ads were massive massive abuse and waste of time for consumers. You can benchmark the level of abuse by the types of ads in the super bowl: Alcohol, crypto, gambling, cars…
The reality is that cable was a paid premium service, unlike broadcast TV, which was free and littered with ads. Mix the two and you lose the golden goose.
That said, the bravado of that executive stuck with me since then.
“The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.” - Ted Sarandos in 2013
Seems Netflix won that race.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-slow-death-of-hollywo...
> [Netflix] now routinely ends shows after their second season, even when they’re still popular. Netflix has learned that the first two seasons of a show are key to bringing in subscribers—but the third and later seasons don’t do much to retain or win new subscribers.. Ending a show after the second season saves money, because showrunners who oversee production tend to negotiate a boost in pay after two years.. Netflix’s strategy is straightforward market power exploitation.. cancelling shows that subscribers like, so it won’t have to pay creators the amount they would otherwise be able to get for making good commercially successful art.
> [Pre 1990s] The Paramount Consent Decrees and the Fin-syn rules were designed to break creative industries into a three-tiered structure: production, distribution, and retailing. Producers were prohibited from vertically integrating into the traditional distribution business. That way, there are fewer conflicts of interest in the content business; producers had to create high quality work, and if they didn’t, distributors could choose to sell someone else’s art. Policy removed power as the mechanism of competition, and emphasized art..
> We should aim to restore open markets for content again. This means separating out the industry into production, distribution, and retailing. We should probably ban predatory pricing so Netflix isn’t dumping into the market. And we should probably begin a radical decentralization of chains and studios. This is all possible. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.
Not sure how many of you have WBD shares with its rather tumultuous past (spin off from ATT, the Bill Hwang mess), but if you've picked up shares on the cheap in the past few years sub $10, congratulations.
"Under the terms of the agreement, each WBD shareholder will receive $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in shares of Netflix common stock for each share of WBD common stock outstanding at the closing of the transaction. "
I don't like this. Netflix rarely creates excellent content; instead, it frequently produces mediocre or worse content. Will the same happen for Warner? Are cinemas now second behind streaming?
Edit: I agree Netflix has good Originals. But most are from the early days when they favored quality over quantity. It is sad to see that they reversed that. They have much funding power and should give it to great art that really sticks, has ambitions and something to tell, and values my time instead of mediocrity.
This deal is an indicator of huge changes in global film & TV production.
Hollywood's struggles amplified after the writer's strike with a perfect storm of issues around unionisation, technology, fragmenting audiences, new formats, asset liabilities and enormous competition to the east.
Now LA soundstages are empty while production centres in Europe, UK, India, China, Nigeria are booming and vast new studios cropping up in the Middle East.
Proposed tariffs will do little to stem this tide as the money has moved on already.
In addition, traditional production methods are unsustainable and decision-making is opaque in an era where sustainability, transparency and democratisation are taking over.
The main benefit to Netflix is of course the IP, but the traditional studio assets of WB have their days numbered.
It's always great to read about how the people the own the means of distribution aquire also the means of production, trying to create a meta-monopoly. /sarcasm
I'm rooting for someone on the regulary side disliking all the crap that Netflix produces, and just shuts the whole thing down. Those 5 billion they'd have to pay for a breakup fee in that case would have me feeling better that I couldn't cancel their service, since my family pesters me to keep it.
As long as David Zaslav is kicked to the curb instead of given power inside Netflix, this could still be a win for the world. I don't know how else we were going to get him out of there.
Heck, Netflix might actually promote Our Flag Means Death!
(HBO being so terrible at modern promotion is what ultimately got them to this place. I found multiple series I really enjoyed there, but always by total accident scrolling alphabetically. The first time I ever saw a promotion for Warrior was when it came to Netflix.)
Consolidations like this were bound to happen. In the mid 2010s we had a good thing, only one streaming platform with pretty much every movie and tv show. Then every studio got greedy and spawned their own platform, forcing netflix to produce their own shows.
Now you have 20 tv networks all with their own subscription and all losing money.
Does anyone who's participated in M&A know how they come up with a breakup fee? I believe this one is $5 Billion (per Bloomberg), and Adobe <-> Figma was $1 Billion.
Interested to understand the modeling that goes into it.
> Combination Will Offer More Choice and Greater Value for Consumers, Create More Opportunities for the Creative Community and Generate Shareholder Value
No doubt about the last part, but how does merging two giants create "More Choice"? I know corporate double-speak is already out of control and I know they're writing whatever they can do avoid regulators who surely are looking into the acquisition, but surely these executives cannot believe acquisitions lead to more choice, right?
The cycling fans among us were quite bashed around over the past few years getting access to cycling coverage in Europe. The were the glory years where GCN Plus was extremely cheap (it was too cheap) and the coverage was ad-free and excellent. Then we got bashed around to Eurosport which was fine, more expensive but still ad-free. Then we got moved to Discovery+. They weaseled out of their ad-free coverage for a bunch of races and jacked up the price because they bundled the cycling in with football and we suffered a price hike from $3-5 per month to $30+ a month, yes a 1000% hike, over the past 5 years.
This was a very foolish choice on Netflix's part. Most if the iconic IP from WB/HBO has gone down hill in a dramatic fashion over the last decade.
Game of Thrones was good for a few seasons, but half way through the fans started dropping almost as quickly as main characters. DC movies have had very few genuine successes, even if they've technically turned a profit.
Putting all that content up on Netflix would be unlikely to pull in that many more subscriptions, and would require dropping the existing streaming service(s) and agreements to allow for exclusivity.
This doesn't bring significant talent or IP to Netflix, it's just an attempt to grab market share. I doubt they'll try to move anything out of WB/HBO's existing streaming platforms or agreements. This just looks like an attempt to increase profits by simply buying a profitable company and letting them mostly continue to function with minimal changes.
In other word, this probably isn't the worst acquisition possible for consumers, but it certainly won't improve life for anyone to let it happen, and it does consolidate market share and control when it comes to media. This probably won't be hugely evil, but it won't be good either.
We’re witnessing the globalization of television.
When all is said and done there’s going to be a few players left and they’re all going to be American by the current looks of things. You could argue movies were already like this, but for television that’s quite the change as most countries had many television production companies and stations.
Now it seems like they’ll be a few global media companies and maybe some local production houses that have to sell their stuff to these guys or setup their own services like the BBC does with iPlayer in the UK, with somewhat limited success compared to these giants.
I wonder if an antitrust suit will be filed, this seems like a pretty significant acquisition.
The offer makes sense if you don’t treat as a straightforward attempt to buy WBD. The proposal itself creates advantages long before the deal closes.
What matters:
- Strategic signaling: Submitting a bid instantly places Netflix in the same acquisition arena as Amazon and Apple. In other words, it’s good PR.
- Access to real diligence: A signed agreement gives Netflix a look inside WBD’s business. Even if everything falls apart, the information has value.
- Pressure on competitors: The bid forces others to act or sit still. Netflix gets to watch how serious each player is.
- Reverse fee as escape valve: A large break fee functions like insurance. If regulators turn the deal into a grind, Netflix can pay the fee and walk away without carrying the wreckage.
- Positioning for the aftermath: If the process damages WBD’s stock and the deal collapses, Netflix has a cleaner path to revisit individual assets later.
- Regulatory posturing: Even if the deal never closes, the offer forces agencies to treat Netflix as a potential consolidator. By proposing to buy all of WBD, Netflix shifts the Overton window by anchoring the conversation at “full acquisition.” Whatever pushback Netflix gets now becomes the map for every deal it tries later.
All of this happens before a single regulator approves anything.
The reverse fee is the cost of the offer, which is roughly 1 percent of Netflix’s market cap.
In practice, that’s the price of buying information at scale, along with the PR and regulatory positioning that come bundled with the offer.
I wonder what the US administration will demand from Netflix for approving this.
This is the strategy for all companies that have lots of risk in their business. The media industry has a lot of risk. Too many failed projects can sink a studio. The only way to guard is to increase in scale across different types of media and channels so your environment is diversified
It’s no different from vail buying up all the ski resorts because they have such global reach they can diversify income streams across a wider set of mountains that have variable quality in winter and there for one bad winter doesn’t sink the whole business because they own so many - the ones that have a good year offset the ones that have a bad one
Same thing with media. A wider range of projects from a wider range of talent increases the chances of discovering the next hit show or gold mine movie property and offsetting all the projects that fail.
The other thing to remember is bigger companies turn slower and adapt to disruption slower. So it also opens up an opportunity in 5-10 to disrupt.
My wife and I have been so fed up with the streaming landscape that we’ve been amassing a library of physical Blu-rays on the cheap from places like McKay’s, etc. It takes a little work, but it’s been really good for our family and encourages us to be thoughtful about what we consume.
Honestly I don’t see us going back to streaming. The content isn’t that compelling; most of what we watch is older (we have kids, so lots of Disney movies), and we’re not really interested in most of the newer shows that would warrant us paying a subscription in order to watch new episodes as they drop. Before we cancelled, I remember looking at the carousel on my Netflix Home Screen and being completely uninterested in any of the content they were pushing.
I’m also not worried about some licensing deal nuking one of my kids’ favorite movies from the catalog now. No ads is just the cherry on top.
This should never have been allowed to happen by the regulators, but in this administration there are no checks, it’s a free for all and Netflix knows it. It saw the opportunity and went for it
Really conflicted on this one. On the one hand, having to pay for N+1 streaming services because none of my N favourite shows are on any one of them sucks. On the other hand, monopoly.
To my eye, there are exactly two effective ways of dealing with the state of media distribution today:
1. Piracy 2. Just say no, recognizing that none of this stuff is necessary to live.
The alternative of jumping through the ever-changing set of hoops necessary to watch particular content is entirely unappealing.
Buy those blu-rays while you still can (:
With this buy Netflix becomes as big as Disney (Disney+Hulu) by market share.
Unwelcome consolidation in the long term.
It’s interesting that the stock market has no reaction to this news, after hours.
As of writing this, Netflix is -0.6%
They got it for cheap. AOL paid $165 billion for Time Warner in 2000. Is Netflix the next AOL?
This is going to be an off the wall statement given this audience, but WWE signed an exclusive deal with NetFlix for 10 years I think in an effort to counter their main competitor AEW, which signed a deal with HBO Max shortly before that. Now they'll both potentially be on the same platform, which WWE will hate as it will be interesting in having two competitive pro wrestling promotions on the same platform.
The most realistic acquirers were Paramount/Skydance or Netflix. Paramount/Skydance is a relatively new-ish entity with David Ellison (Larry's son) as CEO. The general sense in Hollywood is Paramount/Skydance will do little high-brow, art house or awards-fodder films but they will at least distribute films primarily to theaters (they promised to release at least 14 Warner films per year to theaters if their bid was accepted).
Netflix is mostly uninterested in theatrical distribution so the main practical impact of this most of us see day to day may be less theatrical release movies and probably fewer higher budget films being made at all.
Caveats include that the deal has to actually get regulatory approval in the U.S. and EU and survive potential (inevitable?) shareholder lawsuits. Netflix's offer reportedly involved less cash and more debt. Paramount/Skydance argued regulatory approval and the heavy debt made Netflix's offer less attractive than their own despite Netflix's higher top-line price.
Placidly uncaring since long ago I stopped consuming media from either party.
2023: "A Party in Cannes Announces a New Hollywood Power Player". Something like ~300 attendees, probably $10 million. Zaslav and Graydon Carter co-hosted. There were rumored to be thousands of bottles of Dom champagne, which is probably inexpensive in bulk.
https://archive.is/ITc2a
I know the guideline about complaining about site display and rendering, but there’s more to this one, I promise.
This gives a CloudFront 403 error when loaded from a Mullvad VPN endpoint in the US.
How can I vote with my wallet for privacy support from a vendor when there are only a few vendors and they all block VPNs? This is bigger than Netflix, bigger even than streaming media.
I fear that we are very rapidly advancing to a point where you can’t use any of the “normal internet” and the mass-appeal normie services without doing full identification with some unique identifier. For most apps, it’s your phone number (which is 1:1 with a person and these days never changes). For websites, it’s going to be your residential home (IP) address.
I’m glad I downloaded all the movies I’ve ever cared about and have local copies of 100% of them. I doubt I’ll be permitted to use any of these services that stream them now, even if I wanted to.
On one hand it is good that the maybe the streaming will be split into less subscriptions, but on other hand, I think the only way forward is to simply prohibit exclusive streaming rights. I.e. any movie streaming rights should be sold to anyone who wants to buy them for the same price. That is only way to enable competition in streaming.
I hope that this means that the Netflix app on AppleTV will finally become a “first class citizen.”
The Netflix app has always been treated badly by Apple. No idea why, but it means that I can’t have Netflix content in the “What’s Next” queue (among other things, like Netflix actors’ work not showing up in show information).
I'm excited about getting access to the whole WB catalogue?
Does this mean Netflix is acquiring AOL? Can they bring back the internet cd on a magazine cover ? /s anyone remember AOL Time Warner ? Like the biggest company in the world when it merged … is that what Netflix are buying? The former largest company in the world just decade before last?
The reaction here is interesting. I thought this is what people wanted, a consolidation of all the streaming services into one so you did not have to subscribe to 10 different ones. I personally think it's a bad idea, but people need to figure out exactly what they want.
Didn't they just buy HBO? Nice shopping spree!
Those acquisition numbers will just keep becoming larger and larger until one day, when I'm old enough, someone will just acquire the only other player left in the field and Earth will be one single megacorporation.
At this rate Netflix isn’t building a streaming service, it’s building a monopoly starter pack. Give it a few more acquisitions and the “Are you still watching?” prompt will legally qualify as a government notice.
The streaming platforms suffer from fragmentation right now: People don't like hopping between a dozen different streaming platforms to consume entertainment - regardless of price or ads. If you give them an option for a single place where all their media is, they will use it, regardless of what is happening behind the scenes.
They will never all merge into one because of regulatory pressure and because they are competitors.
It seems nice to have one less streaming platform in some ways, but it's not a pathway forward.
I'll continue to use Jellyfin with a few hard drives.
I'm a fan. Injecting a huge catalog into Netflix is a win for consumers who want just one subscription. And injecting studio talent into Netflix (assuming the merge gives WB creatives influence) can only help.
HBO's tech sucks. Apple is (in my experience) hard to get running in the Android ecosystem. Most of the other options are too narrow in catalog, or ad ridden.
Consolidating streaming services down to a handful of offerings will make price competition more fierce because they'll have richer catalogs to do battle with.
I was in one seminar, and someone asked a question about future to Harish Mehta (one of the founder of NASSCOM), and he said that big companies will become bigger for at least next 10 years.
Netflix should buy a theme park and make a rival to Disneyland. Call it Westworld... put a Westworld area, Harry Potter area (make the Hogwarts train like the monorail), Dune area, Lord of the Rings areas (Shire, Rivendell, Gondor, Mordor), DC comics area (Gotham, Metropolis), Game of Thrones areas, etc. So many other properties from Cartoon Network to add for kids. So many other areas to expand on with the IP from WB if Netflix wants to.
Smart move to sell before GenAI takes over the entire industry.
$82.7BILLION
no wonder my subscription keeps going up
I feel like when I was growing up, I learned about how monopolization was bad for society when it came to industries like steel and rail. but for some reason in the 21st century we've decided that maybe corporations are somehow... better citizens or something? despite the evidence?
Obviously, the reason it's gotten this bad is that lobbying is legal and private campaign funding is mandatory. Thanks again, citizens united!
I loved Netflix when they had the DVD service and the recommendation competition because it actually suggested shows I would enjoy.
Once they started producing their own stuff, recommendations no longer worked: they just promoted whatever crap they produced themselves. And with that, trying to find a show I wanted to watch became so much effort that I canceled altogether. Same goes for all the other streaming services.
In terms of people who actually like movies and music it’s not a great time.
Unfortunately it’s pretty clear that the true business model of music and content streamers is about “putting something on in the background” and not actually about the quality level of the content.
Thus you get inoffensive cheap netflix series and AI generated chill beats to study to, and no one really notices as long as it’s above a certain quality threshold.
And this isn’t exactly Netflix’s problem- they know what their users want. When you’re cooking dinner it doesn’t make much difference to you if it’s a Judd Apatow romantic comedy and one that’s some Hallmark knockoff romcom bullshit.
I’m not really sure how to solve the problem of this very siloed video content landscape. No one wants to subscribe to 4 streaming services.
I would think the original netflix model of being mailed bluray discs might be viable, but without independent studios like Warner around, why would anyone produce physical media?
What is going to happen to all WB/HBO tech? Netflix is obviously not interested in their apps or infra, and that probably means a big layoff soon.
R.I.P to the quality of HBO shows and looking forward to slow burn shows getting cancelled more now. HBO has been going through a really bad phase recently ha. With Discovery, WB and now this. Is it too much to hope that the quality of content won't drop to Netflix level? I just hope the "give writers the time and resources" mindset of HBO doesn't change
I just hope they won't destroy sagas like they did to the Witcher. In other words, I don't think this is good for future content as there is a risk movies/series will follow the same scripts, underlying story plots, cultural norms, same cinematography, etc. Quality going down.
Moreover, this also means more time for ads to pay for this merger.
Is it strange that NFLX is down on this news? I would have thought this is a big win for them, as they are consolidating power?
Well, at least it wasn't Larry Ellison.
Seems like:
- Netflix gets the movies and contents (HBO, WB) for its streaming service
- The rest (news, reality TV) will be spun off (Discovery Global)
It seems like the demise of the possibility of great art in the next 50 years. Maybe my bias I find everything made by Apple or Netflix almost perfect but not it. Every moment is curated for maximum something, but not the feeling I get I used to get, even with filler episodes in between.
I didn't really understand why they'd want this, but I think now its strategic protection from someone else consolidating with them. One company with that huge of a library could put a lot of pressure on them by withholding content and with their competing unified streaming service.
Netflix will adapt AI-driven Streaming on demand content. But, critically, it will now be backed up by the entire IP catalogue of WB. Wanna watch a new Superman movie where he meets Harry Pitter? Ok. Wanna see the Matrix as an animated version that includes the Flintstones? Ok.
Oh cool, knock-on price hikes across not just the streaming industry, but all the other industries that decided they needed to bundle streaming subscriptions with their products.
Can't wait to pay even more for my cell bill because they give me "free" Netflix!
"The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us." -- Ted Sarandos, Netflix co-CEO, circa 2012.
(Actually, he walked it back slightly in 2024 - https://archive.ph/V5Kt1).
moviegoing has always been evolving. from kinetoscopes to grand movie palaces to suburban multiplexes. nothing has ever stayed the same for long in cinema.
heck, most theaters used to be continuous program viewing, meaning you’d show up not knowing what was playing, halfway through a movie, cartoon, or newsreel. scheduled viewing was pretty rare until the early 60s, only reserved for tentpole movies like Gone With The Wind or Ben-Hur.
in some ways, where we are heading is back to where we were: tentpole cultural moments like Barbie or Avatar thrive, but the bread and butter of entertainment happens informally, but now at home.
Definitely the least bad outcome, but how much of this catalogue is going to completely drown in the horrid UI of Netflix's apps.
Sometimes it feels like Netflix has too much in its catalogue without any good tools to sort through and filter it.
Interesting, that will bring a big production house capabilities within Netflix itself
The US government made it illegal for movie studios to own movie theaters to prevent studios from only showing movies in theaters they own. Similar laws need to be passed to force streaming content to be shown on all services.
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/netflixs-warner-purc...
I am still shocked not to see the opposite order -- but those days are long gone.
It’s not my business: could someone shed light on how this would better serve their respective customers, versus keeping them separate. Or in other words “what will be possible by this merger that isn’t possible now?”
Memories of AOL-TimeWarner...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarnerMedia#AOL-Time_Warner_me...
Breathe a sigh of relief WB wasn't bought by David Ellison.
Cry softly the next Superman movie will barely be in theaters...
Surely there will be a kpop-demon hunters X DC universe X mortal kombat game that comes out of this...
Netflix seems to hate theatrical releases, so I hope this doesn't affect any small cinemas that want to screen older WB titles. I know when Disney bought Fox, it got a bit harder to book films.
Three wishes - looney tunes and animatics full and uncensored. Don't update them for modern sensibilities. No new looney tunes content unless made by very talented people that love the old ones.
So WB buys/merges w/ discovery to break it back off as part of a merger. Seems sort of silly. Curious if this means pretty much all WB/Disc/HBO content will end up on Netflix.
How the mighty have fallen.
I was working at HBO when Ted Sarandos said, "The goal is to become HBO faster than HBO can become us.”
I knew then how that would play out, although I didn’t have this exact outcome on my bingo card.
Netflix now owns that right to many major media franchises, including:
* The DC Universe (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.)
* Game of Thrones
* Hanna-Barbera (The Flinstones, The Smurfs, etc.)
* Harry Potter
* Looney Tunes ( Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, etc.)
* Scooby-Doo
* Tom and Jerry
* The Big Bang Theory
* The Sopranos
* The Wizard of Oz
If I had a nickel for every time a company that sends out optical disks bought Warner Brothers, I'd have $0.10, which is not a lot, but strange that it happened twice.
The gov will block this for the wrong reasons(they want Ellison to win this) but here’s hoping this and Paramount both get blocked, this level of concentration is not good.
Hopefully I'll finally get to see Chernobyl and Game of Thrones. It's virtually impossible outside of US or Europe to legally stream so many movies and series.
The current US admin will probably thumbs up this deal, but they will like face challenges elsewhere. The huge breakup fees seems to hint a high risk of non-approval
Surely the FTC will take issue with Netflix acquiring HBO Max?
Fortunately, the Warner sister, Dot, will remain independent.
It's time for Netflix' greedy acqs Taking value to the max So just sit back and relax and give us all your cash We're now a Netflix acq!
I was always wondering why Netflix didn't do some acquisitions for backlogs with how much they spend making mediocre to terrible movies and tv shows.
We're cooked.
That was... kind of expected. But the web of cross-interests in the content industry just got another trans-dimensional knot in its topology...
Definitely not great, but at least that means Ellison won't amass even more media control (for now). That is maybe the silver lining.
Not as absurd as back when AOL bought them, but just barely so. I think I'll have an extra frothy latte for breakfast today.
As someone who has recently begun exploring physical media, I find this quite disappointing. The volume on 4K Blu-Rays is often low, prices are high, and Netflix isn't doing much to support physical media.
When you're just unwinding in front of a 65-inch screen, you might not notice the quality loss from compression. However, if you're actively watching on a 110-inch projector with an excellent sound system, every little detail becomes clear.
And that doesn't even address the most frustrating part: owning less and less.
I mean, no one needs to become a physical distributor, but it's disheartening that we lack consumer-friendly ownership of entertainment media when it comes to movies. I would love to see something like Bandcamp, but specifically for studios to release their movies to.
You subscription is about to go up.
I'm going to start looking into alternative solutions ;)
Anyone have a solid alternative solution for local streaming?
Remember when the saying was that Netflix was trying to become HBO before HBO could become Netflix? That turned out weird
So no more whining about licensing. disallowing user-friendly features like casting content they will now own I guess?
I wonder what this means for DC Comics and the current crop of DC films. Will Netflix prefer to start with a clean slate?
Teen shows with 30 year olds by the fourth season... so that Steve Buscemi bit in 30 Rock will now be the norm.
Instead of investigating companies for antitrust like 10 years from now I might have an idea....
Just buy, buy, buy up the competition. Hope someone stops the big fish before it's the only one left.
> Netflix expects to maintain Warner Bros.’ current operations and build on its strengths, including theatrical releases for films.
If Netflix is committing to releasing WB films in theaters, I wonder if they’ll also release shows under the WB/HBO label in the traditional weekly format. With the staggering amount of content that just exists and continues to grow, the “release everything at once and make people binge” model has had zero appeal to me. And seems quite detrimental to how the shows are paced — they seem heavily incentivized to end each episode with a cheap cliffhanger
Nearly every media journalist in Hollywood considers this to be the worst outcome for Hollywood.
ok. it isn't as if there's been more than a handful of movies worth watching which have been made in the last 10 years. consolidating catalogs of at-best-mediocre platforms isn't going to make things any better or worse.
I guess this will mean WB content will also start to become hyper addictive for kids.
Give it to HN to have a bunch of comments defending the creation of a monopoly.
Is this as big as I think it is?
Whole deal sounds Looney Tunes to me. Though Warner does have a substantial catalog, I dumped Netflix because I wasn't impressed with their offerings. After Paramount took all its toys home with them leaving the platform without Star Trek, I had little reason to stay. I'm not a big TV or film buff anyway.
and Warner Brothers owns HBO? So potentially, could we get all HBO shows on Netflix?
Wow, imagine this 10 years ago. It would never have been an option.
(Maybe WB acquiring Netflix...)
This wasn’t on my radar at all. Was this kept quiet or did I just not hear about it?
Aaah the race to the bottom accelerates.
I haven't been a Netflix user for years, the quality of their stuff went past a level I was no longer comfortable supporting. It became a platform that is designed to keep you watching (literally anything) as opposed to a platform to find interesting/relevant entertainment. So much low quality, low effort content. Wonder which of AI wrong-but-instant answers or Netflix' empty entertainment will contribute more to genpop enshitification.
Another related stories here on HN about why Netflix content is getting worse and worse:
Netflix CEO Says Movie Theaters Are Dead - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43542633
Casual Viewing – Why Netflix looks like that - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42529756
I once worked for a tech company that bought Warner Brothers, well time Warner. Did not end well for the tech company (AOL). In my opinion at the time, the cultures between the two were so different. Fly by night tech guys making a decent amount of money mixing with people who worked long to get where they were in the content space, plus the commercial internet was “newer” e.g. less established then. As they used to say, content is king. Good luck.
Netflix thwarting David Ellison and his push to pro-Israel-ify everything.
Netflix was the worst option, except for all the others who were bidding.
Worked out great for AOL and AT&T, so IDK what could go wrong here.
Let's all prepare to say goodbye to any season 3s then!
oh good!, it's easier to avoid one thing rather than two!
Wow the up and comer swallows an extremely established brand
Oh sweet, two of my subscriptions now reduced to one. Right?
Does this mean that now I can watch Bugs Bunny on Netflix?
This may be a hot take but maybe some consolidation in this streaming industry is beneficial, might save some people searching for content they want to see only to find they have to pay for another streaming service because right holders decided to launch their own streaming app.
Netflix prices will probably increase though, and they will probably ruin a lot of golden IP like always, so there's that to complain about.
Man I wish they'd continue The Looney Tunes Show.
On the news of Netflix acquiring Warner Bros, I’m reminded of how good Netflix has been at innovating their business model.
Over the past 27 years, their business model has changed multiple times and each evolution appears to be in direct response to the bottleneck of growth, from maintaining inventory of DVD to acquiring global streaming rights.
Year / Business Model / Bottleneck to Growth
1998 / Sell DVDs over the internet / Need to continually replenish DVD inventory,
1999-2006 / Rent DVDs over the internet / USPS delivery & return times
2007 / Stream movies over the internet / Acquiring US streaming rights to a massive library of movies
2009 / Start producing movies (Netflix Originals) / Number of subscribers watching Netflix Originals
2010-2012 / Global expansion; Canada, South America, Europe / Maintaining rights globally
2025 / Acquire Warner Bros Discovery
Ads. This is how you get ads in streaming services.
This entire Warner Bros saga has just been insanely pathetically sad to watch, because it demonstrates that WB has completely lost touch with reality and that the C-suites at the top have zero innovation or anything else to give at this point. The company has gone through so many megamergers and acquisitions which just added more and more debt to the company that at this point it wouldn't surprise me if Netflix just declares bankruptcy with it or something, because it's a completely lost cause. Of course, the people responsible for this won't learn a thing (even though they're making the exact mistakes of the Cable industry they replaced), and will continue doing the same thing over and over again, because, clearly, learning from mistakes is just not possible for these people.
So they can raise the prices again in a few months?
F...k , more forced inclusion on theaters now...
This was just about the worst case scenario.
Please Netflix, green light Westworld season 5
Where are American anti-trust instituitions?
Where's Brendan Carr when you need him?
For cinema, I guess that's all folks.
What happens to my hbo max susbcription?
I look forward to all my favorite shows on HBO max ending a season with a cliffhanger and then getting canceled regardless of their popularity
Nice of them to start the conversations with a probably lie, that it will be less expensive for consumes because they can now bundle HBO/Netflix. Except this has never been true for more than enough time that for people to forget and past the time to change it, if at all. It will be less selection and cost more, like the usual.
They made the comment and CBC reported on it https://www.cbc.ca/news/entertainment/us-netflix-warner-bros...
This should be an illegal aquisition
So, the big news has arrived finally
Could be worse. Could be AOL.
Pretty soon all media will be owned by 4 tech billionaires. They have done so well with preserving a free and open internet I cannot see why people are concerned they are gobbling up all the alternative legacy communications platforms.
> Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. Following the Separation of Discovery Global for a Total Enterprise Value of $82.7 Billion (Equity Value of $72.0 Billion)
I know this isn't the main point, but does anyone else find this sentence a nightmare to read? "Bros." makes me think we're in a new sentence; This would be fine if the next word wasn't arbitrarily capitalised. Why do people write like this? Why not just capitalise the proper nouns?
Better netflix than than Ellison
Meta playbook.
Netflix was a great product innovator for a long time but now that they're running out of ideas they're pivoting to acquisitions.
I guess one big difference is that their direct competitors aren't startups - they're Amazon, Apple, etc. - so perhaps this plays out more as a race to acquire studios, IP, and creative talent.
Then if/when they have a monopoly they'll charge $20 a month and still play ads every 5 min and we'll be back to cable.
Damn, 2 months ago I got a job offer from them but turned it down for another, seems I made the right choice!
I’m really disappointed, because Netflix doesn’t sell any of their content. You have to subscribe.
I own Soprano’s, White Lotus, Batman Movies, etc on regular media, but I can’t get shows like Black Mirror outside of a subscription for the rest of my life.
I really hope they continue to offer physical and digital sales of their media for those who perfer to buy instead of renting.
Paramount, Disney, NBC Universal, etc all still sell their content even though they operate subscription services and I wish Netflix would do the same.
> from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends
Holy crap did they actually put Citizen Kane and Friends in the same sentence?
Netflix’s content selection has always felt weaker than traditional studios. Sometimes it even looks like filmmakers take Netflix’s massive budgets but don’t give them the same level of serious, polished work they deliver elsewhere.
So, if Netflix ends up managing Warner Bros or HBO, it’s hard not to worry. HBO and Warner Bros are known for premium, high-caliber content, and Netflix’s track record suggests the overall quality could easily take a hit.
How is Apple gonna respond
Paramount can’t be happy
Damn. This is not nice. Netflix really only produces crap for the most part. Their shows are just woke filled with political propaganda.
Sad news.
Paramount being the spurned suitor. David Ellison doesn't sound happy.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/par...
WB was another legacy media empire being run by a megalomaniac hell-bent on destroying their legacy.
I wouldn't normally support this kind of move, but unlike the Skydance deal, Netflix is actually a real company that, like, makes use of IPs and publishes back catalogues.
Things like Looney Tunes will now be in the hands of someone who doesn't hate Looney Tunes.
welp, at least we got 2 or 3 good DC movies before now. It was great while it lasted. I'm so tired of living in hell
I think the way they’ll justify it is by framing it as Disney’s empire versus a combined Netflix + Warner Bros empire.
The sad thing is the WB Studio had a successful year and is healthy.
It's all the other idiotic stuff that's been attached to WB over the years that has broken the business. Time Warner AoL Discovery... is a poster child for what goes wrong when merger after merger happens.
A restructured WB Studio + HBO might be a good business.
"Who acquires Warner Bros. Wtf" - comments heard over my shoulder as I mention the title of this post.
Netflix acquires Warner Bros and uncensored Looney Tunes and uncensored Tom & Jerry were never seen again.
YouTube and Tiktok are the real winners here. The enshitification of traditional media will accelerate.
Another dying industry acquiring another dying industry. Reminds me of Oracle buying Sun Microsystems.
I realize this is about money, and it's 2025 right now, and I'm probably just old, but what will happen to quality? I actually laughed, twice, because they did this, twice:
> Beloved franchises, shows and movies such as [list of some of the greatest classics of all time] will join Netflix’s extensive portfolio including [list of laughable junk], creating an extraordinary entertainment offering for audiences worldwide.
And then just a few lines later (and I won't snarkily shorten this one):
> By combining Warner Bros.’ incredible library of shows and movies—from timeless classics like Casablanca and Citizen Kane to modern favorites like Harry Potter and Friends—with our culture-defining titles like Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game, we'll be able to do that even better.
Like did I really just see Citizen Kane in the same sentence as KPop Demon Hunters? Might as well add Ow, My Balls to the list, that's how jarring the contrast was for me.
Too big to fail?
I had to stop watching Netflix. Every few minutes, I felt I was taken out of the story by some agenda-pushing content. It's so sad because they are very good at storytelling. I hope they won't enshittify Warner Bros. content too
Netflix is buying WB for "friends". That show will be on air for another 50 years.
Couple of unrelated thoughts on this very long thread...
1. I'm sure multiple people have pointed it out, but for all the talk of a bubble, the AOL Time Warner merger was likely the biggest canary in the coal mine for what was to come. History repeats itself with literally the same brand and a lot of the same assets? Sort of depressing if the bubble does now burst because it's like we never learn our lesson
2. Trump wanted the Ellisons because they support him. There's almost no question in my mind the government will fight this. Will they win in court? Hard to say, but my quick thoughts:
If market cap was the basis for antitrust then the answer would be maybe, but that's not the basis for it. Is revenue the basis? No, but Disney generates more than Netflix, so does Comcast, so as a proxy for market share, which I think is somewhat the basis for antitrust (iamaal) it seems like there's no chance this creates some anticompetitive media juggernaut. But then the question is whether streaming is different than more general media. And if it is, how do you define the market when a company like Apple is involved in streaming but not fully a media company? Does that balance things out a bit? I don't think it does because I don't think anyone could claim that Apple counterbalances Netflix in streaming market share. If anything it would be a further argument against Netflix having Netflix and HBOMax.
Now having written all of that, I think the government would win because Paramount streaming with HBO would at least stand a chance in the streaming market against Netflix. And then also increase general media competition because you'd have Disney/ABC, Comcast/NBC, Paramount/CBS with the WBD addition improving Paramount's competitive position relative to the other two.
This is terrible news. Expect enslopification of some of your favorite IPs. Christ.
This sucks, now HBO content will disappear from being searchable in Apple TV.