For a company at the center of a chaotic battle over the future of Hollywood, Warner Bros. Discovery had a pretty good Monday.
The media conglomerate’s film “One Battle After Another” and TV show “The White Lotus” collected the most Golden Globe nominations in their categories. Another of its movies, “Sinners,” also fared well, earning seven nominations.
But the studio did not have much time to celebrate. Just as actors Marlon Wayans and Skye P. Marshall were calling the names of Golden Globe nominees at a news conference at the Beverly Hilton, Paramount launched a hostile takeover bid for WBD valued at more than $108 billion.
WBD’s board and shareholders are weighing competing offers for the studio from Netflix and Paramount. Meanwhile, voters in Hollywood are beginning their deliberations as award season ramps up. Many of the seven Hollywood insiders NBC News spoke with — including producers, marketers and former studio executives — said the looming media merger will shape votes for upcoming awards shows, including the Directors Guild Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the coveted Academy Awards.
“This deal is an emotional piece of news for a lot of people,” said “Silence of the Lambs” producer Edward Saxon, a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and chair of the producing program at the University of Southern California’s film school. “There’s worry about consolidation and about the future of theatrical. The feeling is I don’t get a vote on so much of what’s happening in the industry right now. If I do have a vote on something, I’m going to vote against consolidation.”
Months of speculation about the future of WBD came to a head last week. On Friday, WBD’s board agreed to sell the company’s film, TV and streaming assets to Netflix for $82.7 billion, sparking a backlash from Hollywood guilds, movie theater owners and politicians on both sides of the aisle over a deal they say would harm workers and consumers.
The deal came as something of a surprise. Paramount had been linked to WBD since September, and Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters had publicly downplayed Netflix’s interest.
Some academy members say the possibility of Netflix’s owning Warner Bros., one of the last five traditional movie studios in Hollywood, is cementing their aversion to its business model.
“There isn’t any love lost for Netflix in the industry right now,” said a veteran academy member who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. “The industry feels like they’re a TV company masquerading as a film company.”
In a conference call with investors and the media Friday, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that Netflix has no “opposition to movies in theaters” and that it would uphold Warner Bros.’ existing theatrical agreements. But he also said that “over time the [theatrical] windows will evolve.”
On Monday, Netflix was hit with a consumer lawsuit seeking to block the WBD acquisition on the grounds that it threatens to reduce competition. “We believe this suit is meritless and is merely an attempt by the plaintiffs bar to leverage all the attention on the deal,” a Netflix spokesperson said.
Netflix has released 10 best picture nominees in its history, beginning with Alfonso Cuarón’s “Roma” in 2019, but it has never won the film industry’s biggest prize, in part because of an industry perception that its business model has contributed to the decline of the theatrical movie business.
This year, the company has contenders in Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” the George Clooney vehicle “Jay Kelly” and the animated musical sensation “KPop Demon Hunters.”
Some in Hollywood have defended Netflix from criticism, saying it has opened the door to more creative people.
“There are some people that only get their chance because of streamers,” actor Joel Edgerton, whose quiet drama “Train Dreams” Netflix bought at Sundance last year, told Variety at the Gotham Awards in New York this month.
Other awards voters say they may give a boost to Warner Bros.’ contending titles, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” and Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.”
“There’s a feeling of this year being the last hurrah for Warner,” said another academy member, who requested anonymity so as not to offend Netflix. “There’s sympathy for the people who work there and what they’re going through. And the heads of the film studio [Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy] are well-loved.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter about his film’s seven Golden Globe nominations Monday, Coogler answered a question about the pending WBD deal by saying, “Theatrical releases mean everything to me,” a diplomatic way of signaling worry about a Netflix deal.
Paramount and Netflix will face regulatory hurdles if their offer prevails. Paramount has consistently touted its close ties to the White House as an advantage over other bidders, and, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, some of its financial backing for the deal comes from Affinity Partners, an investment firm founded by Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law.
Paramount has less of a stake in this year’s awards race, apart from “Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning,” which is likely to contend in technical categories like sound and visual effects at the Oscars. But the studio owns CBS and Paramount+, which next month will broadcast and stream the Golden Globes, an event that functions as a marketing vehicle for the nominated films and a low-stakes party for Hollywood.
At last year’s Globes, which aired two weeks before Trump was inaugurated for his second term and several months before David Ellison’s Skydance bought the network, host Nikki Glaser poked fun at Hollywood’s liberal but largely ineffectual politics.
“I’m not here to roast you,” Glaser said. “And how could I? You’re all so famous, so talented, so powerful. I mean, you could really do anything — except tell the country who to vote for. But it’s OK. You’ll get them next time!”
A spokesperson for Glaser did not respond to a question about whether her set will include political humor this year.
Netflix began as a DVD-by-mail company and now is a giant subscription-based streaming service reaching more than a half a billion people across 190 countries through 50 languages
