Julius Young — Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Vantage
The history of Hollywood consolidation is a history of creative collateral damage. Not the shows that were greenlit under the new regime. The ones that were almost made under the old one.
When AT&T completed its acquisition of Time Warner in 2018, Hollywood was told the combination would produce a stronger, better-capitalized company and that HBO's creative autonomy would be protected. What followed hollowed out one of the most distinctive creative cultures in American media. Leadership changes, restructuring under Discovery, and subsequent reorganization disrupted the institutional knowledge and creative relationships that made HBO what it was. Shows were cancelled. Development deals were not renewed. David Ellison has pledged a content-first strategy for the Paramount-WBD merger. The creative case against consolidation is not that the merged entity will produce fewer things — it may produce more. The case is subtler: consolidation reduces the number of distinct voices deciding what gets made. When two studios become one, you go from two chiefs of content with different aesthetics to one. That reduction in perspective shows up three years later, when a certain kind of film stops being made and you cannot point to a specific decision that stopped it. The merger preserves the brand names. Whether it preserves what made those names mean something will be answered in development meetings that have not happened yet. Related: Paramount Promises $6 Billion in Merger Savings