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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.
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If the Netflix-Warner Bros merger proceeds, the feature-film development ecosystem, already imperilled, will be further constrained.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Roy Price
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.
