Well, hold onto your monocles and clutch your pearls, dear readers, for the Great American Dream Machine has just been through a rather aggressive oil change. The US Justice Department, in a move that could only be described as a 'thumbs up from Uncle Sam with a side of corporate lube,' has approved the $111 billion sale of Warner Bros to Paramount. That is one hundred and eleven billion dollars. For context, that's enough gin to float the entire British navy from here to eternity and back, with enough left over to buy a small, gin-soaked principality.
This is not a merger, gentle readers. This is a Hollywood power shift of seismic proportions, a tectonic plate rearrangement in the dream factory. It is the kind of consolidation that would make even the most ardent free-market capitalist choke on their afternoon sherry. But the Justice Department, in its infinite wisdom, has decided that this is perfectly fine. They have, after all, bigger fish to fry: like preventing the consumption of raw milk cheese or ensuring that your morning coffee comes with a warning that it's hot.
What does this mean for the average punter? Well, imagine if Coca-Cola bought Pepsi. Imagine if Apple bought Microsoft. Imagine if the United States of America decided to have a single political party with two slightly different ties. This is that, but with slightly more explosions and talking raccoons.
Now, the combined entity will own enough intellectual property to remake every single film ever made into a slightly different version featuring Batman teaming up with Indiana Jones to fight a federation of talking, gun-toting Transformers. The superheroes will be crossbred, the franchises will be mutilated, and your childhood memories will be harvested, liquefied, and sold back to you in 4K, HDR, Dolby Vision, and with a selection of snack-sized nostalgia-pods.
But let us not forget the small matter of the journalists, the writers, the directors, and the artists who actually create this content. They will be shuffled around like playing cards in a particularly callous poker game. Their livelihoods will be tossed into the giant blender of corporate synergy. The scriptwriters will be replaced by algorithms. The directors will be replaced by focus groups. And the actors? Well, they will be replaced by CGI versions of themselves that can perform stunts without union breaks and can be digitally inserted into any film at any time, for a small fee.
This is the future, my friends. A future where every film is a sequel, every sequel is a reboot, and every reboot is a 'reimagining' that bears no resemblance to the original but has the same title because, God forbid, you'd actually have to think of something new.
The Justice Department has given this merger the green light because, apparently, monopoly is a myth. They believe that competition is alive and well, as long as 'competition' means two mega-corporations fighting over which one gets to charge you $50 for a ticket to see a film that looks exactly like every other film.
I, for one, welcome our new corporate overlords. I will be the first to line up for tickets to 'Batman: The Lost Ark of the Transformers in Jurassic Park: Part XXIV' which will open with a 45-minute advertisement for the product placement that funded its existence.
So raise a glass of whatever affordable spirit you can still afford after this merger drives up the cost of everything. Drink to the death of independent cinema. Drink to the rise of the corporate monoculture. And pray that the algorithms deign to produce something that doesn't make you weep for the loss of human creativity.
Biff Thistlethwaite, signing off. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a date with a gin bottle and a screening of 'The Emoji Movie' to enjoy.
