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Netflix has won the bid for WB. No clue what this will ultimately mean but it can’t be good for physical media

True. But, hey, at least it didn't go to the Ellisons.

The overwhelmingly pessimistic reaction on social media is something to behold. If only it is ungrounded...

My default assumption is that Warner titles will go the same way as Fox ones did after Disney took over the catalogue. Of course, Warner titles were (notoriously) much harder for boutique labels to license anyway, but Warners themselves did an often superb job of presentation and curation—is that realistically likely to continue?

Obviously, I'd love to be wrong, but I wasn't about Fox.

Like so many other industries today, these companies just keep swallowing each other up. So many corporations are too damn big, and the bigger they get, the more gluttonous they become. And it always, always favors only a small handful of people at the top, of course.

I like to think there will always be a market--however small--for physical media. With Netflix winning this, I suspect it would have a bigger impact on The Criterion Channel than their physical distribution licenses. Other "arthouse" streaming services such as Mubi may have a harder time. Netflix dominates streaming worldwide, but that's pretty well known I guess.

MichaelB wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 12:36 pm My default assumption is that Warner titles will go the same way as Fox ones did after Disney took over the catalogue. Of course, Warner titles were (notoriously) much harder for boutique labels to license anyway, but Warners themselves did an often superb job of presentation and curation—is that realistically likely to continue.

Obviously, I'd love to be wrong, but I wasn't about Fox.

The best case scenario is Netflix allowing some degree of autonomy for Warner to continue curating their asset the old way. The worst... I dare not imagine.

I'm guessing that Criterion and Arrow will be signing deals for higher volume of titles very soon.

andyli wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 12:46 pm

MichaelB wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 12:36 pm My default assumption is that Warner titles will go the same way as Fox ones did after Disney took over the catalogue. Of course, Warner titles were (notoriously) much harder for boutique labels to license anyway, but Warners themselves did an often superb job of presentation and curation—is that realistically likely to continue.

Obviously, I'd love to be wrong, but I wasn't about Fox.

The best case scenario is Netflix allowing some degree of autonomy for Warner to continue curating their asset the old way. The worst... I dare not imagine.

That would be the best case scenario, and could even include the Warner "division" being able to release previous Netflix-only productions on home video.

However, given Netflix's repeated stated goal over the last decade to kill theatrical distribution and their obvious lack of support for sell-through home video, I'd put the odds at Warner staying as an autonomous division with traditional theatrical and home video distribution as very, very low.

I hope I lose this bet.

yoloswegmaster wrote:I'm guessing that Criterion and Arrow will be signing deals for higher volume of titles very soon.

Or none at all anymore.

tenia wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 3:27 pm

yoloswegmaster wrote:I'm guessing that Criterion and Arrow will be signing deals for higher volume of titles very soon.

Or none at all anymore.

I mean Criterion were still releasing Fox titles within a couple years after the Disney-Fox merger happened, so I can't see why they wouldn't be able to get a deal done before the Netflix-WB merger happens.

Maybe Ted Sarandos will let Criterion have The Devils.

You are getting the 15 hour Netflix mini-series update of Erich von Stroheim's Greed and you'll like it!

Soon Netflix will allow you to create a avatar and insert it into any movie! I can't wait to become the lead of Citizen Kane!

Cling tightly to your beloved Warner physical media. I worry about the implications for Warner’s program of film restoration, too.

Wouldn't the boutiques have at least another year to negotiate deals even if the merger is completed in late 2026?

Netflix does have an established relationship with Criterion, that's the only reason for optimism.

Still wouldn't be shocked if Netflix kills Warner Archive and defunds Warner's home video releases. It's already strange that Warner hasn't moved on its big, obvious UHD candidates- Curtiz' Robin Hood, An American In Paris, etc. Took years to get The Searchers.

yoloswegmaster wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 4:57 pm Soon Netflix will allow you to create a avatar and insert it into any movie! I can't wait to become the lead of Citizen Kane!

I think I'm already set to appear in a live action modern day remake of A Clockwork Orange at some point in the future whether I want to or not!

I was thinking about the Warner Bros released Blu-ray titles that I have seen and picked up 'in the wild' at my local supermarket across the last year: Sinners, Final Destination: Bloodlines (which with this new merger presumably subsumes New Line yet another sub-layer down the row of production companies); and Fallout: Season One (which was an MGM/Amazon production put out through Warners). Also the recently released Brad Pitt film F1: Formula One was an Apple production that was only just put out on disc by Warners.

After seeing the overwhelmingly pessimistic reaction - including the Film Stage's own declaration that it's a "dark day for cinema" - I have to say I find the doom and gloom overstated given that we just dodged an enormous bullet. I'm surprised I didn't post this here before, but I've been banging on the drum for quite a while now that mergers were a likely and logical progression, perhaps inevitable - without regurgitating pages of details, it was pretty obvious there were too many streamers spending too much money for the landscape to be sustainable, and the only stable precedent I could see that could fit the current world we're living in is the old-school network TV landscape where you had the big three networks and a bunch of marginalized outliers (e.g. UHF channels). It may not be three companies, but at the moment, it's hard to see anything else than a few streaming companies becoming the default options for most people. And we're now in an age where cinema is inextricable from this - outside of hardcore cinephiles, pretty much everyone I know streams all but a few of their movies at home, maybe even all of them period.

There wasn't a chance in hell Warner Bros. was going to spurn all of their suitors, and given how the Ellisons and Netflix sucked up all the oxygen in the news coverage, I highly doubt Comcast was ever going to emerge victorious. What's left was Netflix or what should've been a blatantly obvious worst case scenario for humanity, worse than Musk taking over Twitter, worse than the Ellisons taking possession of Paramount and CBS News - it should've been obvious how bad those other cases were too, and I can't tell you how aggravating it was to see nothing happen when there was a window of opportunity for someone to prevent them, as if we really needed those scenarios to play out to see how terrible it was going to be. I don't know what's going to happen to Warner's catalog on Blu-ray - it'll suck if 99% of it ends of being locked up - but I'll take that over the other scenario.

Most of the doomsaying involves theatrical, but I can't be too upset when I look at Paramount's thoroughly abysmal slate over the last five years, especially compared to Netflix's (imperfect, but at least a good portion of it is actually good and quite a bit of it supports auteur filmmakers that Paramount has no interest in financing). Does Netflix really want to kill off theatrical altogether? I'm skeptical they want to go that far - Sarandos is going to do what's best for Netflix financially regardless of how much he actually loves cinema, but the logic also extends to big budget movies that would be difficult to justify financially without a good deal of ticket sales propping them up, and I doubt anyone's going to assume they can ignore or leave that market behind as if the audience for it will disappear. (On another note, it's also strange how Netflix's theatrical exhibitions at the Paris and elsewhere feel like moviegoing in the traditional sense while my rare trips to the Regal or AMC have mutated into television viewing on steroids, right down to the ridiculous number of advertisements I have to sit through if I show up to a screening at its scheduled time.)

I do wonder what may happen to the Warner Bros. gaming arm as well. Notably every game is being sold at a massive discount on Steam right now, even before Steam's Christmas sale begins - things like the Mortal Kombat franchise. Although given that Warners had massive problems with their two biggest recent titles - Hogwart's Legacy (which was the subject of a concerted boycott campaign during the period when JK Rowling was controversial), and the extremely poorly received Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League game - they may not be too unhappy about getting out of the gaming sphere!

Efforts are building to block the sale of Warner Bros. If the plaintiffs do this, they better make sure it'll apply to Paramount, otherwise they're just blowing off their own feet (and limbs and head).

Allegedly Paramount will launch a hostile bid because they believe they offered more per share than Netflix

hearthesilence wrote: Fri Dec 05, 2025 6:55 pm Efforts are building to block the sale of Warner Bros. If the plaintiffs do this, they better make sure it'll apply to Paramount, otherwise they're just blowing off their own feet (and limbs and head).

The WGA and the like have made it pretty clear that they oppose any merger, but a key thing here is that some of the people speaking out against a sale to Netflix are Republicans, who obviously want a sale to Paramount. I'm not one to pin too many hopes on the EU, but while a sale to Paramount would be tainted under any circumstances, a sale that happens only because the Trump DOJ blatantly forces it by vetoing the Netflix deal (Comcast isn't a serious contender here, in no small part because Trump openly despises Brian Roberts) might be too much for the EU to stomach. What happens next in that case, I have no idea.

I love Republicans' commitment to free-market capitalism, which in this case appears to mean the forced sale of one gigantic American company to another against the former's wishes because the President and his friends want it so

All these monopolies need to be broken up anyway but whether the Democrats will have the cojones to do so is a different question altogether.

My own take on this if WBD has to be sold off, I'd much rather it be Netflix or Comcast. The Ellisons can eat shit.

I see a lot of people rooting for the sale to be blocked, but what do they think is going to happen if that plays out? It reminds me of the time everyone on the left expressed outrage when George W. Bush nominated Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. So did everyone on the right because they thought Miers was too moderate...but the left kept on raging because, why, was Bush going to nominate someone better? And guess what, we got Alito, well fucking played!