Kyle Buchanan

You know, directors have to deal with enough terrible studio notes as it is.

I think anybody trying to get anything that is truly iconoclastic through this system deserves kudos, and it's only going to be all the worse if you feel like you've got to report to the president, too.

Michael, are you familiar with a movie called Alien vs. Predator?

No.

There is a tagline that has outlasted this movie, and that tagline is, whoever wins, we lose.

And, you know, you can say, well, maybe buying Warner Brothers, which has put out some all-time classics, would make Netflix movies and television a little bit better.

That's possible.

But it's hard to say, especially as these companies merge, what creative executives are staying on board, what redundancies start to happen, who gets absorbed into what studio first.

And what executives can't play fair because suddenly they're, you know, rubbing shoulders with somebody else who's at their level that they don't like.

It's very hard to say how this will shake out.

And much as we'd like to say that this would create better content for a consumer, and certainly HBO itself is considered the premium destination for television...

How does HBO change if it gets utterly absorbed into Netflix?

And what kind of independence would HBO retain if either company acquired it?

It's difficult to forecast.

Yes.

You would expect these companies to try to retain that prestige that HBO brings.

But we've already seen with the last HBO merger with Warner Brothers Discovery that Zaslav was all too willing to water down that HBO brand.

I mean, how many times did that icon on your phone or your television change from HBO to HBO Max to just Max and then back to HBO?

Because they couldn't come up with a coherent corporate identity.

Zaslav thought that HBO was too prestigious.