OPINION: We Can’t Let The Netflix/Warner Bros. Deal Kill Movie Theatres

In the latest string of bad news that threatens to further enshittify our culture, I woke up with horror earlier this month to find that Netflix was looking to purchase fellow entertainment giant Warner Bros. Discovery for nearly $83 billion USD.

The move is horrifying for quite a few reasons, one of the chief ones being Netflix’s substantial role as pioneers of the ‘contentification’ of art, and the main architects of second screen TV and movies. There’s also the large library of intellectual property that I have no doubts Netflix was practically salivating to get its hands on, like the film rights to the accursed Harry Potter series and DC Comics characters.

Not only will this deal create an absurdly concentrated media landscape that’s almost certain to make things worse for workers in the film industry, it’s also certain to degrade the cinematic experience for all of us. Although they’ve claimed they’ll continue putting WB movies in cinemas, Netflix have indicated that they’ll have a substantially shorter two-week theatrical release window that echoes their vehement anti-theatre sentiment they’ve pushed in the past decade.

That’s why I’m here to beg: even if this deal goes through, we absolutely cannot let the movie theatre experience die, no matter what clueless executives want for us.

How we watch movies has evolved, for better and worse 

It’s not exactly a secret that the movie theatre business, particularly major multiplexes, have been in a major slump post-COVID. Ticket prices continue to soar, and the global box office is still nowhere near the levels it was pre-2020, despite more movies having been released than prior years.

Part of this is because, ultimately, audiences have been taught that watching new movies at home is a perfectly valid choice: one I’m glad people have, given the cost-of-living crisis we’re living through. However, it should not be a replacement for going to the theatre. Netflix threatens to jeopardise that, and have made it their mission to do so across the past 10 years since they upended the media landscape in ways that we’re continuing to deal with.

Even though the company does occasionally release movies in theatres, they seem intent on making it as difficult to do so as possible. It’s mainly directors with sway like Guillimero del Toro, David Fincher and Rian Johnson that can get their movies released in cinemas through Netflix, but only ever in a limited release – and they also never share the true box office numbers.

Glass Onion was only in theatres for a single week in 2022, while new releases like Frankenstein and Wake Up Dead Man are only given limited releases at inner-city theatres before making their way to Netflix. If Netflix acquires Warner Bros. and makes the two week release window the standard, is that what we can expect from every film released by the huge entertainment conglomerate?

For all the blows that movie theatres as an experience have suffered in the last few years, this deal is by far one of the worst as it threatens to give us startlingly little choice on how we watch the films we love.

Why the cinematic experience is special

As someone who deeply values the movie theatre experience, the prospect of movies being more difficult to see in a cinema than at home is a terribly bleak one. How can a two-week period allow word of mouth to spread, or allow people to see films that they couldn’t catch on opening weekend a few weeks later?

These technocrats that rule the world are making these decisions on our behalf, seemingly believing that we want to spend all of our time indoors consuming content rather than engaging with fellow art or the people around us. It’s part of the ongoing war on collectivism and third places that our tech overlords are waging, who seemingly want every aspect of our lives controlled by an algorithm or AI model.

That’s part of what makes going to the movies so special: it’s an active decision you have to make, rewarded by a shared experience with the people around you. I’ve had some truly transcendental movie theatre experiences this year, like seeing Sinners in IMAX on opening night and One Battle After Another on 70mm with a packed house at the Ritz, and those were so good precisely because of the atmosphere created by those strangers around me.

I especially look back fondly upon authentic phenomena like Barbenheimer, where people dressed up to go to the theatre and see both a complicated investigation into the creator of the atom bomb and a pastel-pink blockbuster on the same day. These experiences were not great simply because it was a collective experience, but because of it: and you just can’t get that at home.

Please, keep going to the movies

As the Netflix/Warner Bros. deal looms large over film culture, there’s a staggeringly simple way to do your part: keep going to the movies.

In particular, supporting independent cinemas is the way to go. Unlike multiplexes that generally only show the newest releases, we’re lucky to have a number of remarkable independent movie theatres in Sydney that care about cinema as an art form as they showcase both new and old films on a regular basis (the Ritz in Randwick is my favourite, if you need a suggestion).

I understand that costs can be prohibitive, and that going out to the cinema is more difficult than simply picking something to watch at home. But in an era focused on keeping us inside and isolated from one another, it’s important to keep this experience alive, to properly engage with this art in the way it was meant to be seen… before we wake up one day and find that we no longer can.