Even if you don't care about Hollywood, movies, or entertainment generally, you should care about this deal.
What’s happening to Hollywood is the same thing happening everywhere else in America: money triumphing over everything — over talent, originality, morality, community, shared culture, and democratic accountability.
Our entire economic system rewards extraction over creation. Movie executives get paid to hollow out one of the oldest studios in the country and sell them to the highest bidder, while being rewarded with obscene wealth in the process.
This is what late-stage American capitalism looks like.
Netflix buying Warner Bros isn’t just a story about Hollywood. It’s another step in a broader pattern: the consolidation of cultural power, economic power, and informational power into fewer and fewer hands.
This is the tech oligarchy asserting itself over one of the last semi-independent creative institutions in America.
Netflix didn’t just disrupt Hollywood. Netflix reshaped Hollywood around itself by blowing up the business model that sustained studios for decades and leaving a crater behind in its place.
And now, after destabilizing the whole ecosystem, Netflix is buying the wreckage. That alone should raise alarms.
Netflix is officially buying Warner Bros. and HBO Max in an $82.7 billion deal.
Netflix will acquire the studio, including its film properties and TV divisions, HBO Max and HBO.
Sydney Sweeney knows her cultural cache is limited. The pendulum always swings, she will age, and the blonde bimbo who flirts with Republican politics will go out of fashion. She’s understandably on a money grab because she knows all of this, so she will produce what’s essentially slop to pull in as much money as she can. Right now her net worth is higher than Zendaya’s.
Zendaya on the other hand has a different trajectory. She wants an academy award, she wants cemented A list status, effectively she’s one of the only real “movie stars” in her age cohort. This year alone she has euphoria (which she’s an executive producer of), Dune 3 (massive box office appeal, the Star Wars of the 2020’s), Spider-Man (another legacy brand), and The Odyssey which basically every A lister managed to get a chunk of. She’s a brand ambassador for several major fashion labels and is a fashion week/met gala fixture.
You can’t really compare them based on this one off. Zendaya could take on a smaller film like The Drama because of her franchise money, which won’t just pay her once but will keep paying her in perpetuity. Robert Pattinson is in this boat too because of twilight when he was a kid. Sydney Sweeney will be a very rich woman but she’s destined to ultimately hawk a make up/perfume brand or something like that and possibly fade from acting altogether. Zendaya is also loaded but is playing the long game, so she’s selecting projects on building a prestige reputation and not just quick pay checks. None of this is judgmental of them, they’re both doing what any smart person would do with their distinct brands.
Trump: do as I say, or I will bomb you back to the stone ages
Iran: best I can do is this 10 point plan where you give us everything we want
Trump: deal!
FoxNews: Trump is a master negotiator
In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with the IRGC demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents - including hundreds of children - dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.
“tucker carlson and mtg aren’t sincere and they’re taking advantage of you!” ok but do you understand how it’s worse that the democratic party has almost no one speaking against the iran war in these unequivocal terms?
A few weeks ago, he said he was going to liberate the Iranian people from an evil regime.
Now he has changed his plan to kill them all.
The President of the United States in a nutshell...