🎥 Entertainment: Netflix buys Warner Bros.

📺 Netflix - Welcoming Warner Bros. to Netflix

Here is the entire text of the email, verbatim from my inbox, with specific words and phrases highlighted for semiotic analysis below:

1️⃣ What is happening?

I’d argue that more than social media, Netflix changed how people watch content in the 21st century. While social media democratised content by giving anyone the power to create and accelerated its distribution, Netflix wrested control of professional content from studios and delivered it to us.

Smaller screens were meant to be the place for social media consumption of low quality, short form user generated content. Movies and TV shows were sacred experiences limited only to cinemas and your living room television. The pandemic changed all of that.

People were now watching entire series on their phones, laptops, and on their increasingly large screen TVs at home. When we were finally released back to the cinemas at the end of the pandemic, all of us remembered the high cost of admission, the expensive yet tasteless food, and that we never knew how to behave in public anymore. To top it off, we were already paying a monthly cost to Netflix and kin to watch all the movies and TV shows we could access at any given time of day or night on any device we watched.

Global cinema attendance fell in 2024, with the trend expected to continue in 2025. What used to be a cheap and cheerful activity has now turned into a once-in-a-blue-moon one. To help offset their continuous attacks from both social media platforms and Netflix, high profile American movie studios launched their own streaming services to stake their claims in the brave new world of streaming.

Warner Media, parent of Warner Bros., for reasons I still do not fully understand, went a step further. After launching their own streaming service, HBO Max, they merged with Discovery, Inc. (home of Discovery Channel and it’s own streaming service Discovery+) in 2022. David Zaslav, the head of Discovery, Inc., was made the CEO of this new entity, imaginatively titled Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).

In 2025, after being put up for sale, Netflix offered to buy only the movie and TV studio divisions of the entity, to which WBD agreed.

2️⃣ What was written, and to whom?

This email was sent out to (likely) all subscribers of Netflix. I suspect this was Netflix’s way of not only officially announcing the news, but also preparing their customers for changes to come, either to the content on the platform or more likely to prices.

DECONSTRUCTING THE TEXT

🗝️ Unlocking Meaning

Two things happen when a company acquires another company: they lay employees off and they adjust (read: raise) their prices for their customers. Outside of keeping their customers informed of the incoming acquisition, did Netflix hint at either of these two possibilities? The first purpose of the email is to get customers excited by positioning the development as a win for Netflix’s subscribers. What impact will this acquisition have on Netflix’s business? Doesn’t matter, you can now watch Harry Potter on Netflix!

But does this mean that subscribers will not have to pay more to watch more? That is where Netflix left the door open. One could argue that all that money Netflix made from cracking down on password sharing should help to offset this almost $100B acquisition. Yet that didn’t stop Netflix from raising prices earlier this year.

Looks like 2026 will mean another hike in subscription prices on Netflix.

👑 Power Play

Or will it? Paramount (itself a 2025 acquisition by Skydance) wants to buy WBD — the whole thing, not just the Warner Bros. bit like Netflix. But even with a sweeter deal value than Netflix, and with the company run by the son of one of the richest men in the world and a Donald Trump mega donor (David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle), WBD seems more willing to split their company and sell off the WB division to Netflix (for a share of the new entity) than wrap up the entire company for the Ellisons.

In a scorched earth move, David Ellison made Paramount’s sweetened offer directly to the WBD shareholders, bypassing the management (a.k.a. a hostile takeover). He followed that up with a public letter to WBD shareholders, saying a Paramount deal is better for everyone.

It’s worth remembering that the deal is, as mentioned in the email, still subject to approval from shareholders and regulatory authorities. The actual power broker in all this, Donald Trump, has yet to speak definitively on the matter. In the mean time, I’m glad I can continue to enjoy watching as much Netflix as I want, whenever I want - all on my current membership plan.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Tell me your reasoning. In next week’s issue, I’ll highlight the most thought-provoking responses.

LAST WEEK’S RESPONSES

One of you felt ‘slop’ was the scariest word of the year.

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