Netflix’s Conquest of Hollywood is Complete

As is the case with so many tech platforms, Netflix has simply re-created twentieth-century technology for the digital age, and made it worse.

In truth, Netflix is a global television company. As America’s go-to provider for low-level, mass entertainment, the streamer is no different from any of the major broadcast networks (CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox), except that Netflix is more powerful, unconstrained by geography and the physical limits of coaxial cable lines, and totally unregulated. By law, the networks have always had to broadcast their over-the-air signal to Americans for free, the cost of which was paid for by advertising. Despite now showing ads, Netflix has no free signal or stream. The company has raised its standard price by 100 percent over the last 14 years and will likely raise it significantly if the merger is completed. As is the case with so many tech platforms, Netflix has simply re-created twentieth-century technology for the digital age and made it worse.

While Netflix’s ultimate goal is to smash the film and television industries into one and take control of the wreckage, Netflix’s executives, as always, are playing the long game. Sarandos understands that theaters aren’t going away in the near or even medium-term future. Instead, they are devolving, especially in rural and suburban regions that face more closures and decreased projection quality. Acquiring Warner Bros. will give Netflix the tools to shore up its beleaguered film unit, collect major profits as the industry contracts, and launder its reputation through a historic studio that comes without Netflix’s reputational baggage. If the merger is completed, It would not be surprising if Netflix moved its auteur films inside Warner Bros. to give it a better shot at winning an Academy Award for best picture, Hollywood’s ultimate symbol of legitimacy, which academy voters have thus far never been able to bring themselves to confer on Netflix.

By selling itself to Netflix, Warner Bros. has confirmed a truth about Hollywood that had long been apparent but is now unignorable: The studios have no competing vision for the future of entertainment. To them, the cinema is just a headache they’d rather be rid of. Netflix might have once been viewed as a threat to their business models, but the merger shows just how much the streamer has succeeded, having not only conquered Hollywood’s balance sheets, but now the imaginations of studio executives. For Zaslav, the relief has never been more comforting.