Could Any Good Come from Netflix Buying Warner Bros. Discovery?

The news of Netflix’s agreement to buy the film and television divisions of Warner Bros. Discovery for a whopping $82.7 billion has sent shockwaves through the entire entertainment industry this week. After months of downplaying their interest with mantras espousing their heritage of “being builders rather than buyers,” Netflix surged forward and beat competing bids from Paramount and Comcast. Many hurdles remain, between industry pushback and governmental consent (especially greasing the hand of the Cheeto-in-Chief), before the purchase is approved and official, but the potential of the deal has been met with a wide range of negative reactions, ranging from wary reservations all the way up to downright terror.

If this deal comes to pass, a great deal of those negative statements are more than warranted. Theater chains are pissed. SAG-AFTRA also chimed in strongly. Jane Fonda’s stance via Instagram, which was echoed in the trades, was particularly specific and conceptually valid. This combination of Netflix and Warner Bros. is indeed a potential constitutional crisis, a guillotine of worker reduction, a First Amendment threat, an antitrust nightmare, and a blow to the independent spirit that Hollywood was founded upon. Add in Netflix’s focus on streaming business, and many people foresee a huge wound delivered to the movie theater business and communal experience, after a bountiful year when Warner Bros. Pictures released a string of bona fide theatrical hits, led by A Minecraft Sinners, F1, Superman, One Battle After Another, and a slew of others, that raked in over $4 billion in 2025. Already slim theatrical windows will probably narrow more often to benefit the home Netflix flagship.

Look, I get all that. The prospects are scary, and the possible reverberations are heavy. Maybe it’s part of my occupational hazard as a film critic who will see movies high, low, far, and wide on whatever size screen they are playing on. I don’t care where they are. I’ll find them, still get enjoyment, and drop a thousand words or more on this site to tell you about them with a voice of consumer advocacy. I think the world and the business are going to keep on spinning if this deal goes through. 

Sure, this massive transaction will create changes and rattle the competition, meaning adjustments will be necessary. So, call me Brad Pitt’s Billy Beane character from Moneyball to echo the quote: “Adapt or die.” The industry, as it has for a century and change, will do just that. No death knell is coming. 

Why? Because there’s too much money to be made. I tell everyone this next axiom who will listen. This whole thing is a business first and an art exposition second. If it were the other way around, they wouldn’t sell tickets. Granted, much of this deal stands to not help the little people and the wallets of regular citizens and consumers all that much (a bump in suscription prices has to feel like a guarantee), but mark my words, everyone’s precious movie business will survive this.

With those notions of survival and adaptation in mind, I’m going to skip adding to the pile of projected negative effects of the Netflix purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, unlike every other website, social media hub, or digital mouthpiece playing Chicken Little right now. In this editorial column, I’m going to try to be optimistic and savvy to postulate some positives that could come to pass with this monster deal. I don’t mind baking some pies for the sky. 

1) THE THEATRICAL SLATE IS SAFE FOR THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE.

With this deal, many people are jumping to conclusions that anything and everything coming down the pike for Warner Bros. Pictures will now be immediately funneled to streaming for Netflix’s gain, skipping the communal and traditional experience of movie theaters. For your information, Warner Bros. Pictures has ironclad distribution contracts in place with all of its films through the year 2029. While business legally has to continue as usual during those years, consider that period a taste test and acclimation period for Netflix to warm up to the theatrical model. I’m telling you. Once they get a taste of a $4 billion year like Warner Bros. had in 2025, Netflix is going to happily add that substantial chunk to their usual $30+ billion take of annual revenue. Maybe, just maybe, that’s an infusion and profit-rich landscape too good for Netflix to pass up participating within. Either way, come back in three years to see if today’s nightmare scenarios come true.  

2) IF NETFLIX DOESN’T LIKE SHARING MONEY WITH THEATER CHAINS, THEY CAN MAKE THEIR OWN.

This sidebar topic is an old soapbox I’ve harped on about for several years on this site in my annual “New Year’s Resolutions for the Movie Industry” editorials here on Film Obsessive. In 2020, the 72-year-old Paramount Decree law prohibiting movie studios from owning their own movie theaters was terminated, allowing big players to cut out the revenue sharing they have with theater chains by being free to operate their own theaters again. The two-year sunset period after that ruling ended three years ago, right when the post-pandemic marketplace was at its lowest and theater companies were flailing financially. 

I’m stunned no one has swooped in to buy a company on the ropes like AMC Theatres, though Amazon kicked the tires in 2020 and 2023. You know who has bought two theaters since 2020 and made them their own? Netflix. They bought and refurbished the Paris Theater in New York and the famed Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, and use them to screen their own branded movies for awards consideration rules, as well as current and repertoire titles. I’ve been to the Egyptian myself, and it’s a palace fully reverential to its history and not a self-serving billboard solely for Netflix. If the awards they covet come, and that publicly favorable route becomes successful, maybe they buy a few more venues or an entire chain to get more. Even better, maybe with more theatrical options, some of those stellar movies Netflix makes in-house can ride the WB coattails to spend some time on a proper big screen longer to snag a few more profits and checkboxes of audience approval.

3) GAINING LEGITIMATE FACILITIES

Speaking of “in-house” production, Warner Bros. carries a sizable portfolio of assets with this potential sale to Netflix. While many folks are pointing to Netflix acquiring name-brand intellectual properties like Game of Thrones, the Harry Potter universe, and the iconic stable of characters from DC Comics, folks are forgetting about the tangible real estate in play. With this deal, Netflix would gain WB’s vast and storied Burbank studio facilities, which are a tremendous bump in size and function from their current studios in Brooklyn, Albuquerque, and Longcross, England. Larger and better sandboxes to play in are undoubtedly going to improve film products, something that has been a knock of cheapness on Netflix’s big-ticket movies and TV shows for a while. 

4) THE BENEFITS FOR THE STREAMING SIDE

Netflix has done a very good job at reading the landscape of the streaming wars to make and brand their own content for many years now, versus paying through the nose to host movies and television shows from other competitors. Adding HBO and HBO Max could raise Netflix’s subscriptions to north of 420 million, far outdistancing its rivals. While the initial answer to the question of combining HBO Max and Netflix into one monster service (with a likely higher consumer price tag) is a no, the crossover of content will be enough to benefit both streaming services. Netflix has always had woefully small classic film offerings, and now they get WB’s prodigious library and the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) branding. With the right rollout, damn good movies get a whole new platform and audience. This is just the film side of things. Imagine the unification of Netflix and HBO Max in the prestige television department. If that unity is made stronger, you’re not going to see a dip in television quality, but rather an exponential multiplier of it.

5) THE POSSIBLE PHYSICAL MEDIA BOON

Speaking of facilities, this might be my most Xellenial pie-in-the-sky entry of the column. With self-admission, I’m still a physical media aficionado with shelves of keepers that possess a higher picture and sound quality than the buffered versions streaming on any number of free or paid platforms. Having proper discs also decreases my reliance overall on doom-scrolling to find entertainment, and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has been one of the stalwarts at still putting out products for store shelves. Maybe (and it’s a big maybe) Netflix will embrace more physical media offerings with the clout and infrastructure of WBHE they have agreed to acquire. While the exclusivity of the Criterion Collection has stepped up add street cred for Netflix and burn a few solid Netflix films to coded plastic discs in pretty packages, the WB provides a greater marketplace. I want to dream that more grand physical media treatment is possible now that they could own their own big hub for it. Granted, that requires stores to bring back the shelves to sell them on, which is a whole other issue. 

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I’ll stop at those five. This whole exercise could go much further across many media and high-stakes implications. I’ll defer to the television experts on other sites when it comes to handicapping the joining of HBO Max and Netflix’s prestige TV forces. Both platforms have put out award-winning, high-quality shows in many different genres. They, too, could benefit from the aforementioned gain in facilities. If we wanted to get really fanciful, imagine Netflix content getting spotlight space in Warner Bros. theme park properties or video game expansion through Warner Bros. Games.

There are, undoubtedly, hefty grains of salt—likely the size of sugar cubes proper people put in their coffee and tea—required to fathom my positive angles out of the Netflix purchase. I’ll own that idealism, knowing full well I’m putting a measure of possibly misplaced trust into a big corporation that can crush even the most indestructible dreams. All eyes will be on the moves made by Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, more than they already were. Positive or negative, the prognostication is just beginning and will be developing throughout much of 2026 and beyond. For at least one column, I chose to pump the brakes of doom to gaze into a crystal ball of positives and patience. I hope even a fraction of it comes to pass. If not, well, the post-“I told you so” confirmation-of-fears editorial will be fun to write next.