In late 2025, Netflix put down an offer to acquire Warner Brothers for around 82 billion dollars. Netflix has accepted this offer, ignoring Paramount’s offer of around 100 billion dollars in cash. This might sound great for many people; Netflix will now have access to a vast library of IPs for future content, but Netflix is first and foremost a streaming platform: a movie theatre’s worst nightmare.
The movie theatre has been a staple of American culture since the early 1900s. However, the Netflix acquisition of WB (Warner Brothers) has the potential to change the movie landscape for the worse, threatening the longevity of not only theatres but competition and creativity.
Netflix does not care for the theatres. Sure, Netflix has dabbled in the theatrical releases with some projects like Frankenstein and the Stranger Things’ season five finale going to theatres for “limited runs,” but those runs are usually around a week, week and half tops. Netflix is all about watching movies at home – not big, bombastic experiences.
While on the press tour for the Netflix movie The Rip, leading actor Matt Damon revealed how Netflix creates their movies. “The standard way to make an action movie that we learned was, you usually have three set pieces… And now they’re like, ‘Can we get a big one in the first five minutes? We want people to stay. And it wouldn’t be terrible if you reiterated the plot three or four times in the dialogue because people are on their phones while they’re watching… It’s really going to start to infringe on how we’re telling the story”
Netflix makes movies that you can put on while doing laundry; the movies they put out are for people not paying attention to them. It’s a very corporate way of making films, leaving very little art left in the art form, and it’s not working for Hollywood.
With Netflix’s rough reputation when it comes to theatres and how they make their movies, people are rightfully concerned about what that means for the quality of WB’s future films and their theatrical window. There was a long running rumor that all future WB films would have a 17 day theatrical run, a real spit in the face to past windows of months at a time. Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has stated that this was false and that he is committed to a 45 day showing in theaters, which is around one and a half months.
This is a little reassuring to movie fans, but I feel that the Netflix acquisition is one of the final nails in the coffin for the theatre industry. The industry has already been struggling since COVID, with many films struggling to break even each year. Sure, some films have broken that golden billion dollar box office threshold, but nowadays, it’s rare. Before COVID, any superhero movie Marvel Studios made could easily reach a billion plus, now they barely make the 500 million mark, and some, like the Marvels and the Thunderbolts* have lost money. If this trend continues this way, Netflix will eventually cut down their planned theatrical window. This is a pretty easy assumption to make as Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, has been on record as only caring for streaming.
“I believe it is an outmoded idea, for most people – not for everybody.” – Ted Sarandos on the topic of Netflix destroying Hollywood during the TIME100 summit in April.
As the CEO of one of the biggest movie studios in the industry, stating that the movie theatre is an outdated concept should be considered an attack. After buying WB, Netflix now owns the film and television rights to The Wizarding World (Harry Potter), Middle Earth (Lord of the Rings), DC Studios, Game of Thrones, Dune, the Monsterverse (King Kong, Godzilla, etc.), Looney Tunes, and many more popular franchises.
With Netflix owning all these beloved IPs, and the CEO not being a fan of theatres, the future of these franchises being on the big screen is looking bleak. I would not count on the 45 day theatre runs in this state of the movie industry.
Even if Netflix holds true to their word and does release films in theatres, they don’t have the best track record for making good projects. The most recent example would be the latest season of Stranger Things, season five. Season five is considered a huge letdown by fans and critics, and to add on to all of the disappointment, the finale was shot before they even finished the scripts, leading to the series dropping in ratings to a 53% on rotten tomatoes. It’s not just Stranger Things either. Their 2025 film The Electric State has been recently nominated for a Razzy (awards for the worst films of the year), not to mention the final season of the Umbrella Academy.
Like I stated before, Netflix makes their movies not for artistic visions but for corporate greed. For every good movie they put out, they release 50 corporate slop films.
Sir Christopher Nolan, famous Oscar winning director of films such as Oppenheimer, Inception, and The Dark Knight, has already made major moves against Netflix.
As the president of the Directors Guild of America, Nolan and the guild have been meeting with Netflix about the acquisition, claiming that it will eliminate jobs in the industry and limit creative competition.
“The world’s largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent,” Nolan said. “The outcome would eliminate jobs, push down wages, worsen conditions for all entertainment workers, raise prices for consumers, and reduce the volume and diversity of content for all viewers.”
It’s not only people in the industry that care about the buyout. Many students have expressed their opinions regarding the topic. Julanne McCranie ‘28 said “I think Netflix is just trying to get their hands on as many studios as they can to exploit.”
Paul Rywelski’ 27 also has his fair share of issues with Netflix. “It’s very anti-consumer. It only focuses on the shareholders and not the actual consumers, leading to an incredibly negative outcome for anybody who wants to actually watch shows… it would force more strain onto smaller groups and they could then, instead of competing with each other in order to make the product better, they would simply just make it worse.”
McCranie and Rywelski are concerned about a potential streaming monopoly by Netflix. Monopolies are inherently terrible for business and consumers alike. They limit competition, meaning that the products don’t have to try to do something new, and leaving the consumers with lackluster products.
Netflix’s buyout is one of the worst things to ever happen to the film and entertainment industry. It will limit theatrical runs, release corporate slop movies with generic plots and stories that people have seen thousands of times, eliminate jobs, and essentially help Netflix get closer to having a monopoly. This is truly a depressing time to be a movie enthusiast.
