This week, Netflix announced that the streaming giant has struck an $82.7 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. and all its content. The acquisition, should it pass regulatory muster, will see Netflix take control not just of Warner Bros.’ vast film catalog, but also DC properties, a massive slate of TV shows from classics like The Sopranos and The Wire, to newer offerings like The White Lotus and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, not to mention upcoming series like Harry Potter and any other Game of Thrones spin-offs.

This is a dangerous gambit for many reasons, and critics of the merger have already responded, calling for federal regulators to block the deal. While there are certainly many reasons to be excited about the excellent slate of content this deal could bring to Netflix, it will almost certainly end in disaster — for movies, for the variety and quality of future TV shows, for filmmakers and actors, and for consumers who will end up footing the bill. Here are five reasons why this is a bad deal for everyone involved.

1

Netflix Wants to Kill the Movie Theater Industry

In many ways, this merger echoes the two-part finale of Apple TV’s recent comedy series, The Studio. In “CinemaCon,” Continental Studios boss Matt Remick (Seth Rogen) discovers that Amazon is considering buying up the studio. The rest of the episode revolves around Remick and his colleagues worrying that they could suffer the same fate as MGM, which was acquired by Amazon for $8.45 billion in 2021.

But there is a massive difference between that acquisition and the Netflix/Warner Bros. deal. By 2021, MGM was largely not a major player in the movie business outside of James Bond. Instead, Amazon gained access to a treasure trove of over 4,000 films and 17,000 television episodes. Warner Bros., on the other hand, is still making blockbuster movies that keep the movie theater business afloat. In 2025 alone, the studio released Sinners, One Battle After Another, Weapons, Superman, A Minecraft Movie, and many other theatrical hits and critical darlings.

Netflix co-CEO, Ted Sarandos, has been very open in his disdain for the movie theater business. In an interview with TIME magazine, Sarandos said: “Folks grew up thinking, ‘I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them play in the theater for two months, and people cry and [there are] sold-out shows.’ It just doesn’t happen very much anymore.”

In that same interview, Sarandos attempted to paint moviegoers as East Coast elites, claiming that movie theaters are an outmoded idea unless “you’re fortunate enough to live in Manhattan, and you can walk to a multiplex and see a movie,” but, he added, “Most of the country cannot.” Perhaps Sarandos is unaware that movie theaters exist in most towns and cities across the country still, and that millions of people have gone to the above Warner Bros. pictures in 2025 alone.

Sarandos clarified his stance after the acquisition news, saying that Netflix has “no opposition to releasing Warner Bros. movies in theaters,” but believes that long theatrical windows “aren’t very consumer-friendly.” Netflix, he noted, will still release all scheduled Warner Bros. films in theaters, but the time between their theatrical and Netflix debuts will shorten considerably.

That may be consumer-friendly, but it may also convince more people to stay at home rather than head to the movies. A recent analysis of 30 theatrical releases in 2025 from analyst firm, the Cinelytic Group, showed that releases of 25 days or fewer “produced neither theatrical benefits nor streaming gains, contradicting the idea that audiences are simply ‘waiting for home release.'” The study found that the best theatrical window was between 26 and 45 days.

Of course, it’s unclear whether the movie theater industry will survive regardless, and its decline — like the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal — feels almost inevitable. The writing has been on the wall for years, and movie theaters may become a niche industry rather than a driving force in entertainment. The fate of physical media more broadly is also a nagging concern, though like theatrical releases, the market for 4K Blu-Ray and other physical media formats has become more niche.

2

HBO’s Quality TV Shows Will Fall Victim to the Netflix Algorithm

Say what you will about Game of Thrones — it certainly went off the rails by the end — but there’s a reason no other streaming service has been able to replicate HBO’s success. Part of that is thanks to the source material (at least the source material George R.R. Martin had completed at the time) but a great deal of the show’s success boils down to HBO’s long-running commitment to quality television. True, Netflix and other streamers have produced many great shows as well. AMC’s Breaking Bad often tops “Best TV Shows Of All Time” lists. Netflix has a few masterpieces under its belt as well, from Baby Reindeer to Adolescence.

Still, it’s hard to imagine Netflix producing The Sopranos or The Wire or even committing to long-running prestige dramas that play out over six or seven seasons. It seems doubtful that The White Lotus or Mare of Easttown would grow out of the Netflix algorithm. Whereas HBO has focused on quality and prestige TV, Netflix’s focus is on churning out as much content as possible to capture as many eyeballs as possible. Algorithm-driven content is antithetical to the HBO model.

Related

Hollywood Is Begging Congress To Block Netflix’s WB Deal — but Can It?

This could rapidly change things.

HBO is also known for prestige TV that is released on a weekly schedule. That was true of Deadwood back in the early ’00s, and it remains true for shows like The Penguin or Task in recent years. While some people love the binge release model — and it does make sense for many TV shows — something important is lost when entire seasons drop all at once. Like movie theaters, a weekly release model encourages communal consumption of entertainment. Fans post theories about mysterious shows like Westworld, for instance, and then we wait to see if they come true. These discussions last weeks or even months. Netflix shows that release all at once are forgotten in days.

Media industry experts also point out that Netflix, unlike Warner Bros. or Paramount, is a technology company. Ted Striphas, professor and chair of the Department of Media Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, warns that “media industries are being reformatted by the technology industry.” Striphas told Collider that, “Increasingly, the thing that we used to call entertainment is now technology. We still use the language of entertainment, but technology is the driving force behind it. And thinking about what this means for how we understand the world of entertainment, the media industries generally, these are the questions that I think are really at stake in this acquisition.”

3

Netflix Could Have a Streaming Monopoly

The streaming business was always going to consolidate. There are too many small players in an industry that relies on scale. But it’s not unreasonable to worry about monopolization. Analysts, celebrities, and insiders have all chimed in on the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal, and many are clamoring for the FTC to step in and prevent the sale. Actress and activist Jane Fonda called the deal “catastrophic” in a statement on Instagram, adding that it “could destroy our creative industry.”

On Bluesky, Man on the Inside creator, Mike Schur, posted, “All media mergers end up hurting writers, actors, directors, and everyone else who works in the industry. Fewer companies means fewer jobs, period.”

The Writers Guild of America issued a statement condemning the deal, warning, “The world’s largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent.”

Both Republicans and Democrats have sounded alarms about the acquisition. “Netflix built a great service, but increasing Netflix’s dominance this way would mean the end of the Golden Age of streaming for content creators and consumers,” U.S. Sen. Mike Lee posted on X.

Across the aisle, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned that the deal “would create one massive media giant with control of close to half of the streaming market — threatening to force Americans into higher subscription prices and fewer choices over what and how they watch, while putting American workers at risk.”

Even former WarnerMedia CEO Jason Kilar offered up a grim critique of the deal. “If I was tasked with doing so,” he posted on X, “I could not think of a more effective way to reduce competition in Hollywood than selling WBD to Netflix.”

Antitrust fears are warranted. Netflix is already the largest streaming service in the world, with over 300 million subscribers worldwide. Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ come in second and third, with an estimated 200 million global subscribers at Amazon and just under 130 million for Disney+, though that figure is closer to 196 million when Hulu is taken into account.

HBO Max worldwide subscriptions are estimated at somewhere between 116 and 122 million. The merger could increase Netflix’s global subscriber share to over 415 million — more than double that of its closest competitor — overnight, though obviously some of these subscribers already subscribe to both services.

How this will impact the quality of streaming content in the future remains to be seen, but it’s an understandable concern.

Big media mergers like the Netflix-Warner Bros. deal cost a great deal of money, as this $82.7 billion price tag makes clear. Netflix will take on massive debt and financial risk in the process, and there’s no guarantee that adding Warner Bros. content to Netflix will result in meaningful subscriber growth over the long haul.

What is likely to happen, however, is twofold. In the first phase, Netflix will engage in cost-cutting measures. This will take various shapes, but these measures often involve major layoffs across overlapping divisions to reduce redundancies. Netflix will not necessarily need separate HR or PR departments at both Netflix and the newly acquired Warner Bros., for instance. Entire divisions could be shut down, office buildings and studios could be sold off as part of consolidation measures and there will almost certainly be cancellations of upcoming and ongoing projects. We saw this unfold dramatically during the Warner Bros. / Discovery merger, when shows like Raised By Wolves and Westworld were not only canceled but removed permanently as part of financial write-downs. The nearly-finished DC film, Batgirl, was torpedoed before ever seeing the light of day.

When Disney acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, as many as 4,000 employees were laid off. Films like Mouse Guard were scrapped entirely, and many others were shelved indefinitely. Corporate executives describe this as “synergy-driven cost optimization,” suggesting that mergers create more efficient companies, but the reality for workers and creatives is much more grim. The reality is also more complicated, and these measures rarely make up for the enormous cost of the acquisitions themselves.

Which brings us to phase two.

5

The Netflix-Warner Bros. Deal Will Raise Prices for Consumers

Image via HBO

When Microsoft purchased video game publisher Activision in 2023 for $68.7 billion — the largest video game acquisition in history — the deal was labeled as good for consumers. Game Pass subscribers would now have access to Call of Duty and other Activision games on day one as part of their subscription. Soon, the reality of this merger became apparent.

In January 2024, Microsoft laid off 1,900 employees across its gaming division, or roughly 8% of the total employees across Activision Blizzard, Xbox, and ZeniMax, which Microsoft had also recently acquired. More layoffs followed.

But layoffs were not the entire picture. The cost of a Game Pass Ultimate subscription in 2023 was $16.99/month. By 2024, that price had jumped to $19.99/month and, in October 2025, Microsoft hiked the price even further, to $29.99/month. At the same time, Game Pass subscription tiers were overhauled. Lower tiers no longer had access to day-one releases or supported cloud gaming.

When Microsoft began floating the Activision merger several years ago, the benefit to consumers was obvious: gamers would be able to play the entire Game Pass library plus Call of Duty for $16.99 per month or less with access to a bevy of day-one releases. The reality in 2025 is much less appealing. One month’s subscription is now nearly half the cost of simply purchasing the game outright.

While this is an example of a video game acquisition, the similarities are important. Both are massive deals in the tens of billions involving the consolidation of traditional media companies into larger tech firms. Netflix also has pricing tiers. Subscribing to the Premium 4k tier currently costs $24.99/month, up from $11.99 in 2016. How much will that tier cost once this acquisition goes through? How much can Netflix raise prices once the company has an even greater hold on the streaming market? How many consumers will avoid increasing prices by moving to ad-supported tiers?

The truth is, cost-cutting measures only go so far, and when those fail, the rest is passed on to consumers. Without healthy competition, companies are able to hike prices further.

On the other hand, there will still be an upper limit on how much hard-earned cash consumers will ultimately be willing to part with. David King, Higdon Professor of Management in the College of Business at Florida State University, explains the acquisition as a game of musical chairs being played by the various streaming services, with only three major companies left standing in the end, “circling the remaining content” — Disney, Netflix and Amazon.

King argues that consumers will spend roughly what they spent on cable TV before the rise of streaming — somewhere in the ballpark $100/month — on entertainment. This includes money spent on movie tickets, though “people aren’t really going to the movies anymore,” King notes, “so that’s not really factoring into the equation.” Half of that $100 goes to internet service providers, leaving just $50 for the average consumer to spend. The remaining streamers “are all fighting for that other $50,” King told Collider. “So what you’ll see is, with Netflix acquiring HBO Max, a Netflix subscription will probably go up, but it will still probably be less than people would pay for Netflix and HBO separately.”

There are other questions, of course. Do we want giant tech companies to be in total control of the entertainment industry? Tech giants have been carving into various industries for years, effectively decimating the taxi industry, for instance, among many others. AI threatens jobs across almost every sector. A tech-focused, algorithm-driven entertainment industry may be good for Netflix and its shareholders, but will it be good for entertainment itself and those of us who love movies and TV and the kind of profound stories the best of this business has to offer? With Paramount responding to the Netflix bid with an even larger $108 billion hostile takeover, and a mercurial Trump administration, the future of Warner Bros. is far from certain.

Still, I suspect that, like any good story, this one will only get worse before it gets better.

The Wire

Release Date

2002 – 2008-00-00

Network

HBO

Directors

Ernest R. Dickerson, Ed Bianchi, Steve Shill, Clark Johnson, Daniel Attias, Agnieszka Holland, Tim Van Patten, Alex Zakrzewski, Anthony Hemingway, Brad Anderson, Clement Virgo, Elodie Keene, Peter Medak, Rob Bailey, Seith Mann, Christine Moore, David Platt, Dominic West, Gloria Muzio, Jim McKay, Leslie Libman, Milcho Manchevski, Robert F. Colesberry, Thomas J. Wright