My plan this week was to review Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein," then the biggest news story of the year broke: Netflix was going to buy Warner Bros. for an obscene amount of money. My feelings on this are that this will be a net negative for the movie industry. On top of a much higher monthly Netflix bill, my two fundamental issues with this are that Netflix has disdain for movie theaters and that it will further limit filmmakers' and audiences' options.
Netflix is a company that seems intent on killing movie theaters. They rarely put their movies in theaters, and when they do, it is for a very short time: usually a week or two. "Knives Out" was a huge box office and critical hit. Writer/Director Rian Johnson signed a deal to make more Benoit Blanc movies with Netflix after all that success. "Glass Onion" came out and was in theaters for one week, and that was the week of Thanksgiving. They left a ton of money on the table. Sadly, they did not learn from that mistake, because the new one, "Wake Up Dead Man," is getting two weeks in theaters. Yet again, they aren't taking advantage of the money this one could make.
In buying WB, Netflix would have the rights to DC. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and the rest of the DC comic book characters would be under the control of a company that hates movie theaters. Netflix has said that all WB/DC movies currently scheduled to release in theaters will still release in theaters. The keyword in that is "currently." Once that is over, the only place to see the new Superman flick could be Netflix.
With one less studio, the choices for filmmakers and audiences will shrink even more than they already have. The biggest threat to entertainment in general is conglomeration. Fewer options mean fewer choices, which means smaller voices get drowned out by the big companies. All we will get are giant, multimillion-dollar blockbusters, and the smaller, mid-budget movies (which are struggling as it is) will disappear.
I am not sure how many Netflix original movies you have watched, but I have watched plenty, and they are 99% garbage. They spend millions of dollars to churn out mediocre garbage. "The Electric State," which they released this past year, cost $320 million. It was never released in theaters, and I doubt it drove that amount in new subscriptions. That is all Netflix cares about, and what is at the heart of this deal. Netflix wants more "content" to get more subscriptions.
This deal is still months, probably years, away from going through. There are lots of groups challenging this acquisition. It still has to go through the government for approval (and with how things stand, I doubt the current administration cares that much). If this does go through, it will be a sad day for the industry.
