Internationally recognised art and literary critic, writer and cultural producer. Published in ELLE, Glamour, Esquire and Cosmopolitan; member of the Union of Writers.
I was sitting in a screening room in Soho on Monday – one of those plush, underground ones where the air conditioning is always set to “morgue” – when the news broke. Paramount isn’t taking Netflix’s victory lap lying down.
David Ellison, the man currently trying to steer the chaotic ship that is Paramount, has decided to go nuclear. A hostile takeover bid. $108.4 billion. All cash.
If you’re not a finance nerd, let me translate: this is Ellison walking into the poker game, seeing Netflix’s royal flush, and dumping a suitcase of gold bars on the table, hoping the sheer weight of it breaks the furniture.
It’s messy. It’s aggressive. And honestly? It’s the most exciting thing to happen to Hollywood since the writers’ strike ended. Because this isn’t just about who owns Batman or Harry Potter. This is a philosophical war over what entertainment actually is.
On one side, you have Netflix: the algorithm, the stream, the “content.” On the other, you have Paramount: the studio lot, the theatrical release, the “cinema.” And Ellison is pitching himself as the last line of defense against the digital void.
Ellison is offering cash for the whole thing. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
“We’re sitting on Wall Street, where cash is still king,” he told CNBC. It’s a great line. It sounds like something Gordon Gekko would say before destroying a pension fund. But it’s also a direct challenge to the WBD board: Do you want Netflix’s funny money and a headache with the cable assets, or do you want a giant cheque and a clean break?
For the shareholders, this is seductive. $30 a share. A cleaner exit.
But for the rest of us – the people who actually watch movies – the stakes are different. Ellison is claiming that a Netflix victory spells “the death of the theatrical movie business.”
That’s fighting talk. It’s also probably true.
Netflix tolerates cinemas. Paramount needs them. If Paramount buys Warner Bros., you get a behemoth dedicated to putting films on big screens. If Netflix buys them? You get The Batman Part II on your phone while you’re on the bus.
The Savior Complex
There is something fascinating about David Ellison. He’s the son of Larry Ellison (the Oracle billionaire), so he’s grown up with “F-You Money” as a baseline. He’s spent fifteen years producing movies (Top Gun: Maverick, Mission: Impossible). He loves the industry in a way that feels… almost quaint.
He’s positioning himself as the white knight. “We’re sitting here trying to save it,” he says.
But saviors usually come with baggage. In this case, the baggage is political.
Ellison has been cozying up to Donald Trump. He’s been spotted at UFC fights with the president. He’s put Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News. He’s talking about building a news service for the “70% of Americans in the middle,” which is code for “not too liberal, please.”
If he buys Warner Bros., he gets CNN. Merging CNN with a “transformed” CBS News under the watchful eye of a Trump-friendly billionaire? That is a media landscape shift that will make Succession look like a documentary.
And then there’s the money behind the money. Jared Kushner is involved. The Saudis are involved. Qatar is involved.
Paramount says these foreign investors won’t have board seats. They won’t have a vote. But let’s be real: when you lend someone billions of dollars, they tend to take your calls.
The Antitrust Trap
Ellison’s smartest play isn’t the money; it’s the lawyer talk.
He’s arguing that Netflix buying HBO is anticompetitive. “Allowing the No. 1 streaming service to combine with the No. 3 streaming service,” he calls it.
He has a point. If Netflix absorbs HBO, they become a content monopoly. They own the watercooler.
Paramount, on the other hand, is smaller in the streaming world. If they buy Warner Bros., they create a “real competitor” to Disney and Netflix. They create balance.
It’s a seductive argument for regulators. And Ellison is betting that his relationship with Trump – who loves a good deal and hates “Big Tech” censorship – will tip the scales in his favor.
The View from the Stalls
So, who do we root for?
It’s a choice between two monsters. Netflix is the indifferent blob that wants to turn all art into “content.” Paramount is the old-school tycoon backed by oil money and political favors.
But as a critic, I find myself strangely drawn to Ellison’s pitch. Not because I trust him implicitly, but because he’s promising to keep the lights on in the cinema.
“30 movies a year in theaters exclusively,” he promised.
That matters. It matters to the directors. It matters to the writers. It matters to the audience who still believes that seeing a film in the dark with strangers is a sacred experience.
Netflix doesn’t care about that experience. To them, a theatre is just a marketing expense.
If Ellison wins, the movie business stays messy, political, and corporate – but it stays the movie business. If Netflix wins, it becomes the app business.
The Chaos Factor
The WBD board has ten days to decide. Ten days.
The stock is already jumping. The sharks are circling. Netflix might come back with a higher offer. They have the deep pockets. But do they have the stomach for a brawl?
Ellison clearly does. He’s behaving like a man who believes he is on a holy crusade to save Hollywood from the nerds in Silicon Valley.
I remember watching Top Gun: Maverick. It was a film that refused to die. It refused to go to streaming. It waited. And when it hit cinemas, it roared. It reminded everyone why we bother leaving the house.
Ellison produced that. He knows the power of the big screen.
Whether that knowledge is worth $108 billion – and the political baggage that comes with it – is the question of the decade. But one thing is for sure: the next two weeks are going to be more dramatic than anything Warner Bros. has released in years.
Grab your popcorn. The hostile takeover is the only show in town.
