Joe Adalian

You would think, given what everyone said about us, that we would be the guys that would be doing the worst now.

We're kind of the guys doing the best now.

I think the Ellisons sort of went for this in the short term, but even then, I do think you can break down the whole sort of idea that in the end, everybody could lose.

Because

People who are at Warner Brothers now are going to go through yet another merger, the third in about a decade.

We are going to move now to this breaking news from Washington.

A federal judge there has approved without any conditions the $85 billion merger of AT&T and Time Warner.

which means another round of layoffs, another round of divisions getting consolidated into other divisions.

It means what was already a lean operation there, as so many places in Hollywood are now much leaner than they were 10 years ago, gets even leaner.

It means that for the next year, year and a half or so, rather than just focusing on making shows, people are going to be distracted about new bosses, new ways of doing things.

Colleagues going away, new colleagues coming in to take their place or to do their jobs.

So Warner Brothers sort of loses.

People who are creatives, people who write and produce and direct TV shows and movies will be losers too because there's one less independent voice deciding whether their project can get made.

You know, you can't have a bidding war now against Warner Brothers and Paramount for the same project.

You know, Paramount Plus and HBO Max...

for the most part, don't actually compete right now for shows, but it means that for big movies, there is less of a battle that could go on.

And even though Ellison has said that he will continue to do a full, robust supply of big feature films for both studios, as many as 30 a year,

Almost nobody believes them.

And even if they make that same number of movies, they're going to pay talent a lot less because they can, right?

There's less competition.