One nepo baby to rule them all
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What was the significance of David Ellison's acquisition of Warner Brothers?
All right, what's the craziest thing your daddy ever bought you? For David Ellison, son of Ora Clary, the answer would be Warner Brothers. Not the actual brothers. Larry Ellison bought his best boy David the studio. Larry had already bought David Paramount the studio, and Paramount the studio just beat Netflix out in a long, drawn-out saga to acquire... The WB! The debt-ridden studio that owns Batman, Bugs, Harry, Carrie, Mad Max, The Matrix, Tony, Tyrion, all six friends, the Lego Cinematic Universe, and the . Oh, and CNN, you just bought Wolf Blitzer. The biggest night in Hollywood is around the corner, but we're gonna talk about the biggest deal in Hollywood and why it's probably gonna be bad for you on Today Explained.
Chances are your favorite websites used to depend on Google for traffic and money. But that's not really working anymore. Now publishers are scrambling for new lifelines. Neil Vogel, who runs People Inc., says his company figured it out a couple years ago.
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'm Peter Kafka, the host of Channels, the show about tech and media and what happens when they collide.
How does the consolidation of studios affect Hollywood jobs?
You can hear my conversation with Neil Vogel now, wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.
Today Explained. Joe Adalian is the West Coast editor for Vulture, where his piece on the mega deal between Paramount and Warner Brothers was titled, Paramount Wins, Everybody Loses.
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.
Meanwhile, AT&T just announced a multi-billion dollar deal that combines its media unit, which is WarnerMedia, with Discovery Communications.
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.
We are continuing to monitor some of those layoffs coming out of Warner Brothers' discovery.
Paramount Skydance is laying off more than 1,000 employees as the entertainment industry continues to struggle.
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.
What challenges do creatives face after the Warner Brothers merger?
So Warner Brothers sort of loses.
So employees at Warner Brothers right out the gate lose. looking straight down the barrel of layoffs. Right.
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. So that means big things might not get made. Or if they do get made, people will make a lot less money of it. So from that sense, consolidation is bad.
Why might fewer movies be produced after the merger?
When people think of Warner Brothers, they probably think about movies. They probably think about Batman.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What was the significance of David Ellison's acquisition of Warner Brothers?
0:00–1:28
2
How does the consolidation of studios affect Hollywood jobs?
1:28–3:07
3
What challenges do creatives face after the Warner Brothers merger?
3:07–4:16
4
Why might fewer movies be produced after the merger?
4:16–4:59
5
What impact does David Ellison's leadership have on Paramount and Warner Brothers?
4:59–5:58
6
How is HBO's future affected by these industry changes?
5:58–7:13
7
What are the potential winners and losers from this merger?
7:13–8:02
8
What does the future hold for David Ellison in Hollywood?
8:02–26:03