Alex Ritson

Can Paramount afford it now though because Affinity partners have disappeared from the bid?

There's actually not that

many details as to why they've pulled out it doesn't seem to have affected the ability of paramount to raise money because it's understood that paramount are still very much interested it could be more of a reflection of the political controversy that this would have brought and maybe jared kushner was weighing up whether this would be an advantage to him obviously being son-in-law of the president or whether this would be a hindrance given all the opposition that would raise from various quarters

There's a lot at stake for whoever wins this.

What's it going to do to the streaming market, the movie industry?

It would completely change the landscape of American entertainment and global entertainment.

Warner Brothers Discovery, they have HBO Max, so Game of Thrones, Succession, The Wire.

In terms of the film, we've got Batman, House of Cards.

Harry Potter franchises, really huge names.

Say Netflix bought that, all of these massive shows would be all under one umbrella.

That's going to pose big regulatory problems because the market share, put quite simply, would be too big.

That's going to pose anti-trust issues, anti-monopoly issues, as it's known, in the rest of the world.

If Paramount were successful, they would still have a huge conglomerate there.

It just wouldn't be quite as big a market share there.

So no matter what happens, there will be regulatory hurdles to overcome, not just in the United States, by the way, because these are distributed all around the world.

Either way, it's going to be an issue.

And there are people in Hollywood who are a bit afraid of this mega merger because they think, well, does that mean that wages will be driven down?

Does that mean that corners will be cut, that the workforce will be reduced?

And if you're a consumer sitting at home...

It might be great.