Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg on the Netflix-Warner Bros. Deal: ‘AMC Should Buy It’

How would Matt Remick react to the industry-jolting news that Netflix is buying Warner Bros. and HBO Max?

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, executive producers of the Emmy-winning Apple TV comedy “The Studio,” told Variety that they believe their fictional studio executive, played by Rogen in the series, would react with his gut instinct of dread fear.

“He’d be scared of it,” Rogen told Variety. “He would be terrified of it. I think he assumes that if you do well, they’re not going to sell off your company, your studio, to a tech company. But I guess he’d be proven wrong in this instance.”

Rogen and Goldberg were at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles on Sunday evening for the 18th annual National Arts and Entertainment Awards handed out by the Los Angeles Press Club. Rogen and his wife, Lauren Miller, are receiving the club’s Visionary Award for their charitable work.

When pressed by Variety as to their personal reactions to the $82.7 billion deal that will marry the world’s dominant streamer with Hollywood’s single-largest studio and the HBO Max platform, Rogen said with sincerity: “Absolutely not.”

But Goldberg was game. “I don’t know. Who knows if it even happens,” he told Variety. “I think AMC should buy it,” he said, referring to the world’s largest exhibition chain and the fear in the film business that Netflix will significantly shrink the exhibition windows for Warner Bros. film releases.

“That’s my personal opinion. AMC should buy it all. I don’t know how, but they should. No one will see that coming,” Goldberg said. “That would be antithetical to Netflix.”

More to come