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Netflix to buy Warner Bros. and HBO Max in $82.7 billion deal

https://variety.com/2025/biz/news/netflix-to-acquire-warner-bros-82-7-billion-deal-1236601034/

https://xcancel.com/SenWarren/status/1996966530177733114#m

Thordros [he/him, comrade/them] - 7day

🎶 Yar har, fiddle de dee 🎶

🎶 Being a pirate is alright to be 🎶

🎶 Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free 🎶

🎶 You are a pirate! 🎶

pirate-jammin

63
CommunistBear [he/him] - 7day

luffy-wave

22
jack [he/him, comrade/them] - 7day

Thank God, I was so worried the tech and media capitalists weren't making sufficient progress in monopolization. This is a huge relief!

52
glimmer_twin [he/him] - 7day

So HBO is just never making a quality show ever again huh

39
buckykat [none/use name] - 7day

astronaut-1

19
glimmer_twin [he/him] - 6day

That’s just obviously not true tho is it

1
buckykat [none/use name] - 6day

HBO and its shows are not just all bad, they have had a significant harmful effect on TV as a whole by popularizing "prestige" TV.

1
Inui [comrade/them] - 7day

They will every once in a while, but it'll be cancelled after 1 season for not meeting their bloated expectations of every show doing Sopranos numbers.

12
InevitableSwing [none/use name] - 7day

HBOLQ

8
supafuzz [comrade/them] - 7day

this is going to absolutely suck for consoomers and the culture at large but hear me out for a second

batman and bugs bunny fighting white walkers and squid game goons in the upside down

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batsforpeace [any, any] - 7day

consoomers tired of IP? let’s do a crossover!

30
supafuzz [comrade/them] - 7day

just jam 'em all together like a nonsensical mashup t-shirt

it would work at least once

23
abc [he/him, comrade/them] - 7day

MY MOVIE THEATERS ligma-1

TOM CRUISE I NEED YOU, TOM CRUISE THE PEOPLE NEED YOU, TOM CRUISE I WILL BECOME A SCIENTOLOGIST IF YOU KILL DAVID ZASLAV

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came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them] - 7day

lol i dropped netflix years ago. then i dropped Hulu, then i dropped prime. hbo was the last one standing, and i resolved to drop it with the last price increase but im kinda wanting to see where Welcome to Derry is going first. its my last streamer, and the back catalogue is pretty sharp, so im not aggressively disastisfied yet.

but if this merger happens, i will be unironically very happy to cancel netflix a second time and write something super snippy in the comment box.

its insane to me how mergers work. netflix fucking sucks. their price hikes coupled with quiet catalogue deletion and the absolute shit tier quality of their studios enshittified them so fast, they have clearly begun a mortality spiral.

so obviously, because the logic of capitalism is supreme, they can draw on dubious valuation and leverage crazy credit to make a hail mary pass at buying out a much more established, older competitor to reset their terminal decline and saddle the new entity with so much debt, the enshittification will start again at warp speed.

for you cultural archivists out there, get as much of HBOs back catalogue as you can, because you know that shit will vanish off the platform once netflix takes over and begins their stealth content pruning.

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kungen @feddit.nu - 6day

quiet catalogue deletion

I agree 100% that Netflix sucks... but isn't this due to Netflix not owning the content/not renewing licensing? Or has Netflix been removing their own content as well?

7
came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them] - 6day

"Well, the reasons streaming services do this are numerous, but often it's about money. If a show isn't very popular and isn't helping attract subscribers or retain them, it makes more financial sense to decommission it. This means future residuals don't have to be paid to actors and other eligible creators, and you can get a nice big tax write-off for the money you spent on an underperforming show."

https://www.howtogeek.com/what-happens-when-streaming-services-start-deleting-their-own-movies-and-shows/

imagine you buy a company and its catalogue. if HBO has a more generous residuals compensation plan than netflix "wants", it could make sense to quietly hatchet content that does not draw enough streams or attention to justify the administrative overhead of keeping it available. and since its their content they couldn't lose it to the competition either. it just quietly goes away while the streamer advertises the latest True Crime / Storage Wars crossover or AI scripted Jane Austen knock off with sexy people they farted out for $10K an episode.

it could also be a way to force a renegotiation with original creators to accept shittier terms for keeping the older content up.

anyway, i do not trust the logic of the boardroom to preserve anything.

3
rubber_chicken [he/him] - 6day

OK so I just downloaded Welcome to Derry S1E1 because (a) you kinda recommended it and (b) I thought it would be some Irish shit, maybe some Peaky-Blinders-esque violence at some point but maybe just about a new family moving in and adjusting. I even saw the original IT a few weeks ago but had apparently completely forgotten about the town name.

Anyway, the internet here isn't fast enough to download something else tonight so back to getting the daylights scared out of me.

6
came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them] - 6day

just to warn you, the first episode is the weakest imo. it has some really gross/vioent scenes and its before introducing any of the things i became curious about. like i almost decided against eatching any more but i was bored a few weeks later and decided to give it another shot.

its definitely more interesting starting with ep2.

6
Redcuban1959 [any] - 7day

Highway to the danger zone

Gonna take it right into the danger zone

Highway to the danger zone

Ride into the danger zone

13
thelastaxolotl [he/him] - 7day

Some lib on tiktok was telling how this is a good thing because paramount is pro ai and fascist, like netflix wont do the same if they see money

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OffSeasonPrincess [she/her] - 7day

Ai brainworms arent limited to pro-ai ppl, it turns out

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Beaver [he/him] - 7day

I'm so glad I don't watch TV anymore.

23
jackmaoist [none/use name] - 7day

Considering how WB has been, I really don't have an opinion here.

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WellTheresYourCobbler [ey/em, they/them] - 6day

Same, i don’t know how they can get much worse atp, but I’m used to being surprised in that department.

5
ElChapoDeChapo [he/him, comrade/them] - 7day

Honestly the lesser evil compared to Zaslov

At least maybe some good canceled adult swim shows will come back (they won't but I will continue to cope)

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lib1 [comrade/them] - 7day

The replies on that hisssssss tweet are abysmal. Is all of Twitter just that now?

15
Arahnya [he/him, fae/faer] - 7day

It is bad, but people persist there despite the horrors.

5
plinky [he/him] - 7day

free cashflow of 9 billion, what are you doing capitalist nemesii?

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regul [any] - 7day

Didn't they just announce the date for Euphoria Season 3? There's no way the SEC lets a company with a trans person in a sympathetic role have a merger!

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Frogmanfromlake [none/use name] - 7day

Ancaps in the replies asking for someone to put the noose in their hands around their neck

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darkcalling [comrade/them, she/her] - 7day

I was worried Paramount/Skydance would buy it up as I saw that as worse given how they're most interested in making nakedly fascist slop compared to even the rest of the American competition and anything that punts Zaslav out of power is a good thing for media overall I think. This does give Netflix a much needed DEEP IP catalog of both existing shows/movies they can stream as well as IP universes they can make content for. One of their bigger problems competing with HBO, Disney, and the networks was they all had vaults of content they could slop out to nostalgic consumers (I'm guilty of that too) at very little cost and they could do reboots and sequels and so on while Netflix was stuck building from the ground up.

But who knows maybe they'll mismanage it and go down in flames. Should be interesting at least and maybe they'll give us a few quality pieces of content before they get bored trying to prove they're alright to the audience and industry and go back to turning the screws on everything to squeeze max profit out of it.

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