\n\tOne by one, the studios that built Hollywood are falling \u2014 or else being folded into one another in such a way that their identities are lost in the process.<\/p>\n
\n\tFirst, we saw Amazon swallow MGM, as the studio that once boasted \u201cmore stars than there are in heaven\u201d was absorbed by the same company that drove bookstores out of business. Then came the Disney-Fox merger, in which one of the industry\u2019s most prolific studios \u2014 the one that gave us everything from \u201cStar Wars\u201d to \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d \u2014 was downsized to a spare room<\/a> of the Mouse House.<\/p>\n \n\tNext up appears to be Warner Bros.<\/a> Discovery, whose shield-shaped logo adorns the water tower looming over its Burbank lot. But not even that can protect the 102-year-old Hollywood institution from being bought out, either by deep-pocketed David Ellison (fresh off his acquisition of Paramount<\/a>) or an even bigger bidder.<\/p>\n \n\tWhat would be lost if somebody buys Warner Bros.? Depends on who makes the deal, of course, and yet the very possibility demonstrates what a precarious position Hollywood\u2019s most reliable storytellers\/sausage-makers now find themselves in. As I write this, I\u2019m sitting on a plane where the screen embedded in the seat before me boasts \u201cthe best in streaming content\u201d beneath logos for Disney+, HBO Max and Paramount+. If Ellison were to get his wish, would that mean the latter two streaming services might fold into one: a kind of \u201cHBO ParaMax\u201d? Who would be the Hulu in that equation (the place second-tier Fox movies go to die)?<\/p>\n \n\tIt wouldn\u2019t be the first time the studio that produced \u201cCasablanca,\u201d \u201cThe Searchers\u201d and \u201c2001: A Space Odyssey\u201d had changed hands. Corporate-minded Kinney National Service bought the studio way back in 1969, writing off millions worth of \u201cproblematic\u201d projects and assets right away. The company swelled with the Time Warner merger, then landed most of the MGM library (including \u201cGone With the Wind\u201d to \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d) when it gobbled up Turner Broadcasting in 1996.<\/p>\n \n\tAnd there was also the AOL merger in 2001, back before the dot-com crash<\/a>, when overvalued internet entities had the power to acquire legacy media companies. I worked for AOL in the early aughts, and it was surreal to be working under the same umbrella as the studio whose commitment to the Harry Potter and \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d series (the latter via its New Line division) revolutionized the franchise business. Here was a company that dedicated never-before-seen resources to story arcs that took as much as a decade to tell. Elsewhere in the company, HBO was showing a similar commitment to \u201cSex and the City\u201d and \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d revolutionizing what audiences could expect from television.<\/p>\n \n\tNearly a quarter-century later, Warner Bros. is, to this critic\u2019s eyes, the studio willing to take the biggest risks on auteur directors. Who else would have gambled on Ryan Coogler\u2019s Black-and-white-and-red-all-over 1930s vampire epic \u201cSinners<\/a>\u201d? Or spent some $130 million for Paul Thomas Anderson to adapt a Thomas Pynchon novel (so loosely it may as well be his original creation)? Or trusted indie darling Greta Gerwig\u2019s vision for \u201cBarbie<\/a>,\u201d minting gold from a more grown-up approach to the toy brand?<\/p>\n \n\tIt was Warner that gave Clint Eastwood a place to hang his hat (even if they did wrong<\/a> by his last film, \u201cJuror No. 2\u201d). The studio offered Christopher Nolan the resources he needed to make massive mind-warps like \u201cInception\u201d and \u201cInterstellar\u201d between Batman movies (but ultimately lost him to Universal when it came time to make career-best \u201cOppenheimer\u201d). The studio has taken huge swings on DC heroes, dating all the way back to 1978\u2019s \u201cSuperman: The Movie\u201d (but pulled the plug <\/a>on \u201cBatgirl\u201d because Zaslav saw greater upside in the tax write-off than releasing it). And it has inspired more laughter via its Looney Tunes characters than a million Minions (only to leave the director of \u201cCoyote vs. Acme\u201d in tears after canceling the release<\/a> of that finished film).<\/p>\n \n\tFor a while, I worried the studio might send Bong Joon Ho\u2019s oft-delayed \u201cMickey 17\u201d straight to streaming \u2014 a solution that occasionally makes sense, ever since the pandemic disrupted audiences\u2019 moviegoing habits, even as it betrays a fundamental belief in how such films deserve to be seen. (Remember the way Warner did that with \u201cDune,\u201d rather than waiting the extra year the way Paramount did on \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d?) Warner makes films for the biggest possible screens \u2014 but that business model comes at an enormous cost and seems especially vulnerable at a time when no one can predict how audiences will behave.<\/p>\n \n\tThe studio has had a strong year, what with hits like \u201cWeapons\u201d and \u201cSinners\u201d helping to cover for the soft performance of \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d and such. If the studio was to win the Oscar, it would be the first time since \u201cArgo\u201d \u2014 and yet, Warner movies are nominated nearly every year because the studio cares about quality (more now than in the early days, when it traded largely in musicals and gangster movies). Would that commitment to filmmakers carry forward? That\u2019s why an acquisition makes me nervous, especially so soon after Ellison snapped up Paramount: Each time a studio changes hands, the culture of creativity shifts, and it\u2019s too early to see how he plans to change the studio.<\/p>\n \n\tLooking back over just the past half-decade, Warner Bros. is unique in the way it seems to value auteurs above the franchises they launched. Like every studio in town, Warner is in the franchise business, but look how executives allowed the Wachowskis to subvert the execs\u2019 wishes in \u201cThe Matrix Resurrections\u201d (which functions as a feature-length critique of cash-grab sequels). Or \u201cJoker: Folie \u00e0 Deux,\u201d in which the studio allowed Todd Phillips to turn on the original film\u2019s fans. Even \u201cBarbie\u201d pokes fun at the men in the boardroom.<\/p>\n \n\tAll three films hail from a studio that somehow manages to surprise, and which might see its identity upended entirely in a sale. The Acme in \u201cCoyote vs. Acme\u201d could be read as the in-on-the-joke corporation that made the movie. For years, Warner Discovery seemed too big to fail, when in fact, breaking it down and selling it off might be the only way to keep it alive. The $43 billion question: Will we still recognize it in another form?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One by one, the studios that built Hollywood are falling \u2014 or else being folded into one another…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[64,63,1841,134,33471,427,6141,6142],"class_list":["post-235572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barbie","tag-entertainment","tag-sinners","tag-tv","tag-warner-bros","tag-warner-bros-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}