James Cameron Complains About Netflix/Warner Bros Merger, Doesn’t Acknowledge A Paramount Deal Would Be Much Worse
from the gargantuan-ego dept
We’ve explained in detail how Larry Ellison is trying to scuttle Netflix’s planned merger with Warner Brothers because he wants to buy CNN and HBO, and, as he’s doing with CBS (and now TikTok) turn them into a safe space for right wing zealots, autocrats, and oligarchs. He’s unsubtly trying to build the kind of autocrat-friendly state television we’ve seen arise in places like Orban’s Hungary.
Since Donald Trump and MAGA want the same thing, they’ve been helping Ellison’s quest along, first by launching a campaign against “woke Netflix” across right wing media, and more recently by launching a fake DOJ “antitrust investigation” that scrutinizes the Netflix Warner Bros merger “to protect the public interest,” but ignores the fact that a Paramount/Warner tie up would be arguably worse.
Enter Director James Cameron, who last week decided to “help” by writing a publicized letter to Senator Mike Lee, lamenting the Netflix Warner Brothers merger (and only the Netflix merger) as “disastrous to the motion picture business.” Cameron, who in the letter calls himself a “humble movie farmer,” seems to mostly be concerned with the a possible shortening of the 45-day theater-to-streaming window:
He’s also doubtful Netflix would stick to its pledge about keeping movies in theaters for a set amount of time; his letter cited a 17-day theatrical window that was cited in an earlier Deadline report, rather than the more recently mentioned 45-day window.
“What administrative body will hold them to task if they slowly sunset their so-called commitment to theatrical releases?” Cameron wondered.
Traditional theater owners have been particularly and understandably sensitive about the shortening of this window since COVID demonstrated the outdated nature of such arbitrary restrictions. Major chains like AMC haven’t helped themselves on this front; their biggest innovation of late has been to saddle brick-and-mortar theater visitors with more ads than ever.
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos didn’t take Cameron’s public grievances well, saying he’d already met with Cameron about maintaining the 45-day release window, and lamented Cameron’s participation in a “Paramount disinformation campaign:”
“I met with James personally in late December and laid out for him our 45-day commitment to theatrical exhibition of films and to the Warner Bros slate,” Sarandos told Fox Business’ The Claman Countdown today in the latest sit-down in the exec’s seemingly never-ending media blitz this week. “I have talked about that commitment in the press countless times. I swore under oath in front of the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust that that’s what we would be doing.”
“So I am … I’m particularly surprised and disappointed that James chose to be part of the Paramount disinformation campaign that’s been going on for months about this deal,” Sarandos said, sticking it at the same time to the Oscar winner and his David Ellison-owned WB rival.
The weird part about Cameron’s missive is he doesn’t mention Paramount at all in his letter to Lee, despite the fact that it’s extremely likely that Paramount would be just as bad on shortening release windows. And given that Paramount and Warner have way more structural similarities than Netflix and Warner, the number of layoffs would likely be significantly worse.
This is before you even get to the fact that Larry Ellison is clearly gobbling up media giants in service to our violent kakistocracy, something that seems kind of important to mention if you’re going to inject yourself into the middle of the debate. Cameron mentions none of this; either because he doesn’t know, or because he was potentially made promises by Ellison and Paramount and didn’t want to be transparent about it (neither of which is good).
None of this is to say that a Netflix Warner Brothers merger would be great for consumers or the market. Media consolidation always results in layoffs, higher prices and steadily eroded product quality. Ideally you’d block all additional media consolidation and impose meaningful limits. But that’s simply not happening under Trump, making the Netflix Warner tie up the best of a bunch of bad options.
Anybody trying to do any good (and that includes Dem lawmakers) in the regulatory reality we currently inhabit would likely have to concur Netflix owning Warner is better than Ellison owning the entirety of U.S. media. Especially given what we’ve all been witnessing over at CBS (and know from years of watching Ellison’s nonexistent ethics at Oracle). Strange days, strange bedfellows.
Filed Under: consolidation, film, james cameron, larry ellison, media, mike lee, release windows, state television, streaming, ted sarandos, theaters
Companies: netflix, paramount, warner bros. discovery
Comments on “James Cameron Complains About Netflix/Warner Bros Merger, Doesn’t Acknowledge A Paramount Deal Would Be Much Worse”
Jimmy, look. If it’s that big of a deal for you then only work with their competitors. If the 45 day window is as imperative as you claim it to be then let Netflix do their thing, and stop interrupting the opposition while they’re making mistakes.
god forbid Avatar 5 spend less than a month in theatres, people might forget James Cameron’s derivarive drivel even faster
Re:
Without a big screen to passively consume 3D visuals with there is zero reason anybody would watch Avatar.
Movies used to have "legs"
Movies used to have have legs. They would run for months in theatres before coming out on video.
Today the new movies go from theatres to one more postage stamp on your netflix menu within weeks.
American Graffiti played for 54 weeks at the Colorado 4 in Denver and for 63 weeks at the Varscona in Edmonton.
Titanic…
Toy Story…
Jaws…
None of these movies would be the cultural phenomenon that they are if they had been rammed onto video within a few weeks.
Re:
Counterpoint: Brazil, It’s a Wonderful Life, Fight Club, Office Space, and Citizen freaking Kane were all flops at the box office. Maybe long theater runs aren’t what determines a movie’s memorability?
Re: Re:
Regarding “It’s a Wonderful Life”…
Copyright was actively harming its popularity. Had the copyright been renewed, it probably would’ve been just another out-of-print Christmas movie you’d never heard of.
Re: Re:
Fight Club made a profit of about 35 million dollars at the box office, by normal non-Hollywood accounting: $100 million revenue on $65 million production costs. Hardly a flop, even if the studio expected more; I’d love to get 35 million dollars for failing at something (especially if I could call it a loss for tax purposes). Those numbers don’t include home media, television, or streaming revenue.
Office Space made over 2 million in box-office profit, after paying everyone. Despite its marketing being basically incompetent, according to its screenwriter and director, Mike Judge. I’m guessing it’s made some more money since. People did, after all, hire Judge again for Idiocracy and Extract. (Idiocracy did lose money at the box office, because Fox intentionally released it “in as few theaters as legally possible”, with no marketing; Extract doesn’t seem well-remembered, but apparently did a little better than Office Space.)
Brazil is listed as having made about $5,000 in box office revenue outside the U.S., which suggests, again, that the copyright holder was not even trying. One might raise the question, then, of why they should be allowed to continue owning the copyright.
Re: Re: Re:
I too would love to funnel 100% of a movies profit into my pockets but pardon my ignorance, does a single person receive all the profit that a movie makes? I thought that got divided by the literal hundreds of people who worked on the movie. Also, the fact the Judge was hired for future projects does nothing to affect the actual box office figures for Office Space.
Re:
Star Wars too.
Re:
…were both published before home video. It’s much easier to become a “cultural phenomenon” when there’s no real competition, except whatever less-good movies happen to be in theaters concurrently.
In those days, it took a lot longer for word to get out; also a lot longer to get a chance to see it, what with having to make time to go to a theater instead of pressing a button on a remote. When one got around to going to the theater, one might see a listing for something one had been hearing good things about for months, and it was an easy enough choice.
Even by the time of Titanic and Toy Story, going to a video rental store wasn’t necessarily that much cheaper or easier than a theater. I went to a lot of cheap matinees as a kid, at a theater across the street from the rental store. It was like a dollar per kid, maybe two for an adult, and we’d usually bring our own snacks.
Now, one can instantly watch almost any movie published in the last hundred-plus years, except the recent movies. Almost everyone has screens that are enormous by the standards of the time you’re talking about, and surround-sound is easy to get for those who want it. There’s no going back to those days.
Re:
I think you’ve got the causality arrow pointing backwards.
Re: Re:
I don’t think so.
Movies in theatres get billboards, they get big posters on the wall, they get lots of promotion and “see it now!”
A movie on Netflix is a postage stamp on your screen alongside dozens of other postage stamps, and it has exactly the same appeal as the ten or twenty year old movie that’s listed right beside it.
Home video is where movies go to die, just one tiny part of that great pile of other movies.
Re: Re: Re:
I tell you what movies in long cinema runs did for me growing up as a kid.
They meant I got all of mine on dodgy VHS tapes out of the back of a van. Especially with the long delay before they hit UK cinemas after their US run, and generally a year plus before I could buy a home version.
Re: Re: Re:
Yes, and sometimes there’s a reason for that.
Do you really think Slam Dunk Ernest wasn’t a big hit because it wasn’t released theatrically? Or is it just possible that it wasn’t released theatrically because the studio didn’t think it was going to be a hit?
Re:
Post-theatre distribution also used to be a much more expensive process, so the distributors might as well let them run as long as possible.
But just because a movie gets a theatre release doesn’t automatically “give it legs”. Most movies released fail to make a profit.
And inversely, there are a lot of cult classics that didn’t see much success before releasing on home video.
Re: Re:
And half his examples were released before the home video market even existed.
Of course movies ran longer in theaters when the only choices for watching them were going to the theater or waiting for them to show on TV. (Which for most people meant broadcast TV; HBO existed in the mid-1970s but was only available in four states and its subscriber base was in the 5 to low 6 figures.)
Re: Re: Re:
For those who don’t know, that also meant extra censorship, added and frequent commercial breaks, and often the removal of scenes to make room for the commercials.
And remember that it was a low-resolution screen of maybe 20 inches if one was lucky (when my parents were using that one, I was stuck on the 13-incher in the basement). With one small speaker. A proper home theater system was outside the reach of most people: it would cost thousands of dollars, equivalent probably to $10,000+ today, and rear-projection TVs needed a dark room.
Re: Re: Re:
The film industry fought tooth and nail to ensure no such market ever would exist. They failed, gave in (eventually), and made trillions of dollars.
I see no reason to think they know any better when it comes to theatrical exclusivity periods.
That’s some really tricky wording. I wonder whether it’s accidental. Note that it claims a 45-day commitment, rather than a long-term commitment to a 45-day window.
What’s the actual sworn statement this person made? The story’s “I swore under oath” link doesn’t actually mention it. In particular, how long (if at all) did they commit to maintaining a 45-day window? After all, the person who made that statement could be out on their ass by tomorrow.
Submersible experts really ought to stay in their lane and leave this business to the professionals…
Wouldn’t the theater-to-stream window be maintained for serious films in order to be eligible for awards?
James Cameron
Useful Idiot.
I’m sure the debt crippled, fascist failson run and Saudi reliant Paramount/Warner entity will become a champion of Cinema tradition, pushing quality epics to venues they don’t control and have to share profit with, shouldering all the risk to produce art for art’s sake, free of political interference and censorship. Just look at the quality art they’re hurriedly pushing into production, like Rush Hour 3, because there’s a massive audience demand for Brett Ratner films.
Re:
They’re hurrying that one so hard that it’s being released in 2007!
Re: Re:
Well, 4, but the point stands. They pushed a third sequel into production to appease the mad king, not based on audience demand or cimematic merit.
Re: Re: Re:
Eh, bringing Ratner back might be to appease Trump. The film existing in the first place seems more like run-of-the-mill Hollywood thinking; a movie stands a better chance if it’s part of a franchise, any franchise.
There was even a Rush Hour TV series for a minute there.