PART ONE: What Netflix Has Actually Built
A Decade of Original Storytelling vs. The Window Obsession
For months, the debate over the Warner Bros. sale has been dominated by a single, obsessive question: What will happen to the theatrical window? Ted Sarandos promises 45 days. Regulators fret. Exhibitors lobby. And somewhere in the noise, the actual point of all this—the movies themselves—gets lost.
It is time to stop fixating on windows and start looking at the work.
Because when you look at what Netflix has actually created over the last decade, the choice facing Warner Bros. shareholders becomes much clearer. It’s not about 45 days versus 60 days. It’s about whether a studio with a hard-won creative renaissance wants to be owned by a company that has spent years proving it can support exactly the kind of filmmaking Warner Bros. now excels at.
The Netflix Story: A Decade of Original Storytelling
Netflix entered the original film business in 2015 with Beasts of No Nation, a brutal war drama starring Idris Elba that announced the streamer’s ambition to make serious, adult-focused cinema. It was a risk. It paid off.
What followed was not a flood of algorithm-generated content, but a sustained commitment to filmmaker-driven storytelling that traditional studios had abandoned.
2018: Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma, a black-and-white, semi-autobiographical film in Spanish, won three Academy Awards and was named Best Film by the New York Film Critics Circle. It was the kind of personal, artistically ambitious project that no major studio would touch.
2019: Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, a three-and-a-half-hour epic reuniting Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, received 10 Oscar nominations. Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story earned six, with Laura Dern winning Best Supporting Actress. Netflix released 60 original films that year, spanning Dolemite Is My Name, The Two Popes, and the animated breakthrough Klaus, which earned the streamer its first Oscar nomination in animation.
2020-2021: The Power of the Dog, Jane Campion’s brooding Western, won Best Director at the Oscars and was named Best Motion Picture – Drama at the Golden Globes. Don’t Look Up, Adam McKay’s star-studded satire, earned four nominations. The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s directorial debut, announced a major new filmmaking voice.
2022-2025: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (which won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature), May December, Nyad, Rustin, Emilia Pérez—the list continues.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The numbers tell the story. Netflix has won 42 Golden Globes from 278 nominations. It has earned over 160 Oscar nominations and 26 wins across categories from Best Picture to Best Documentary Short.
This is not the record of a company that “doesn’t believe in cinema.” This is the record of a company that has become the primary home for exactly the kind of mid-budget, director-driven, adult-oriented filmmaking that the studio system abandoned.
As Variety noted, Netflix has proven it can “rival traditional studios in both scale and prestige”.
Filmmaker Relationships That Matter
Netflix has spent a decade building relationships with the world’s greatest filmmakers and earning their trust. Martin Scorsese, Alfonso Cuarón, Noah Baumbach, Jane Campion, the Coen Brothers, David Fincher, Guillermo del Toro, Rian Johnson—these are not names who work with studios that don’t understand cinema.
They work with Netflix because Netflix has proven it will let them make the films they want to make, at the budgets they need, with the creative freedom they require. The Irishman required a level of trust and investment that no traditional studio was willing to provide. Netflix provided it.
What This Means for Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. today is experiencing a creative renaissance that rivals anything in its history. Thirty Oscar nominations for 2025. Original films like Sinners, Weapons, and One Battle After Another are dominating the cultural conversation. A slate that balances franchise obligations (Superman, The Conjuring) with auteur gambles from J.J. Abrams, Sam Esmail, Tim Miller, Paul Thomas Anderson, and Ryan Coogler.
This is what a healthy studio looks like. And it aligns almost perfectly with what Netflix has spent a decade building.
- Netflix needs original, filmmaker-driven content to feed its 300 million subscribers.
- Warner Bros. has proven it can produce exactly that content at scale
- The combination would create a creative engine that could rival anything in Hollywood history
The fixation on theatrical windows is a distraction from this fundamental truth. Netflix has promised a 45-day window to get the deal done. But more importantly, it has demonstrated over a decade that it understands how to support and nurture the kind of filmmaking that Warner Bros. now excels at.
The shareholders voting on March 20 should ask themselves one question: Which buyer has actually proven they can support original storytelling at scale?
The answer is Netflix.
PART TWO: The Paramount Reality
Acquired IP, Missing Creativity, and the Ghost of 20th Century Fox
Now consider the alternative. Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. promises $6 billion in “synergies” and a commitment to “respect the heritage.” But look closely at what Paramount has actually become since the Skydance merger—and at what happened the last time a creatively vibrant studio was acquired by a debt-fuelled corporate parent.
The picture is not encouraging.
The Paramount Slate: Acquired IP and Missing Originality
Since the Skydance merger, Paramount has announced ambitious plans to increase theatrical output to at least 15 films annually starting in 2026. But look at what those films actually are.
The 2026 slate, as currently dated, includes:
- Scream 7 (February 27) — an acquired franchise, originally from Dimension/Wes Craven
- Scary Movie (June 12) — an acquired franchise, originally from Dimension/Wayans Bros.
- Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie (August 14) — a Nickelodeon property
- Street Fighter (October 16) — a video game adaptation, acquired IP
- The Angry Birds Movie 3 (December 23) — a video game adaptation, acquired IP
This is not a slate built on original development. It is a slate built on acquired intellectual property—franchises that Paramount did not create, did not develop, and in many cases acquired from other studios after their commercial peak.
Where is the creativity? Where are the filmmaker-driven projects that defined Paramount’s own legacy? The studio that once produced The Godfather, Chinatown, and Breakfast at Tiffany’s is now betting its future on Angry Birds 3 and a Street Fighter reboot.
The 2027 slate offers little more comfort: The Angry Birds Movie 3 (again), Sonic the Hedgehog 4, A Quiet Place III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 2. These are sequels to sequels, built on IP that Paramount acquired or licensed.
And critically, the 2025 slate “underperformed, with most titles expected to miss their lifetime profit targets”. This is a studio in creative and commercial decline, hoping that volume and IP recognition can compensate for a lack of original vision.
The Fox Precedent: What Happens When a Studio Gets Sold
This brings us to the cautionary tale that should terrify everyone who cares about Warner Bros.’ future.
In the decade before its acquisition by Disney, 20th Century Fox was one of the most creatively vibrant studios in Hollywood. It had Avatar and the X-Men franchise, yes. But it also had The Revenant, 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland. Between 1995 and 2019, Fox ranked among the top distributors year after year, with a library that included everything from Independence Day to Ice Age to The Martian.
When Disney acquired Fox in 2019 for $71.3 billion, the promise was that the studio would continue to operate, that its creative identity would be preserved. The reality was very different.
In the immediate aftermath:
- Blue Sky Studios, the animation house that built the Ice Age franchise, was shuttered permanently
- Fox 2000, the division responsible for mid-budget adult dramas like The Hate U Give and Hidden Figures, was shut down
- The development slate that had produced Nomadland—a film developed and greenlit by the old Fox regime—was quietly hollowed out.
The films that succeeded after the merger were almost exclusively franchise properties. Deadpool & Wolverine became the highest-grossing R-rated film in history. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes grossed nearly $400 million. These were hits—but they were hits built on IP that Fox had developed before the acquisition.
What about original fare? David O. Russell’s Amsterdam flopped. Kenneth Branagh’s A Haunting in Venice underperformed. The kind of unconventional box office triumphs that Fox once specialised in—Bohemian Rhapsody, Ford v Ferrari, The Greatest Showman—have not materialised under Disney’s ownership.
As one industry analyst put it: “Original films are harder to anticipate”. The translation is clear: under debt-fueled corporate ownership, original films don’t get made.
The $6 Billion Question
This is the exact fear that hangs over Warner Bros. today.
Paramount’s bid promises $6 billion in “synergies”. As the WBD board has explicitly warned, those savings are “likely to come from workforce/headcount reductions,” especially “given the overlapping nature of the studio, streaming and linear networks businesses” of the two companies.
Translation: two historic studio lots, two development teams, two marketing departments, two physical production units. In a debt-fuelled merger of this scale—$90+ billion in pro forma debt, the largest LBO in history—redundancy is the first thing to go. And when redundancy is eliminated, originality is often the casualty.
Consider the math. Paramount, a company valued at roughly $14 billion, is attempting to acquire Warner Bros. for over $100 billion. The resulting entity would carry debt at 6.8 times annual EBITDA, a level associated with “junk” financing.
What does that debt load mean in practical terms? It means that every greenlight becomes a calculation of guaranteed returns. It means that a $90 million original vampire movie from Ryan Coogler—the kind that just grossed $366 million for Warner Bros.—becomes an unacceptable risk. It means that a $38 million original horror gambit like Weapons never gets made, because why take the chance when you can make another Conjuring prequel?
The executive who greenlit Sinners and Weapons and One Battle After Another would be replaced by a spreadsheet. And the spreadsheet would say: franchise only.
The Warner Bros. Renaissance at Risk
Warner Bros. today is experiencing a creative renaissance that rivals anything in its history. Thirty Oscar nominations. Original films like Sinners, Weapons, and One Battle After Another are dominating the cultural conversation. A slate that balances franchise obligations (Superman, The Conjuring) with auteur gambles (J.J. Abrams, Sam Esmail, Tim Miller, Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler).
This is what a healthy studio looks like. It is exactly what 20th Century Fox looked like in the years before Disney’s acquisition—a studio that could deliver reliable franchise hits and take big swings on original, filmmaker-driven visions.
The Fox precedent teaches us what happens next. Under debt-fuelled corporate ownership, the original films vanish. The development slate gets hollowed out. The filmmaker’s relationships atrophy. The franchises survive—but the soul dies.
The 20th Century Studios label today releases a maximum of five films per year, compared to 12-17 as an independent Fox. The movies that do get made are almost exclusively franchise properties—Alien, Apes, Avatar—while original fare struggles or goes straight to streaming.
The Choice
The shareholders voting on March 20 are not just choosing between $27.75 and $31 per share. They are choosing between two fundamentally different futures.
- Netflix offers a proven track record of supporting original, filmmaker-driven storytelling at scale. It offers relationships with the world’s greatest directors and a willingness to take creative risks that traditional studios have abandoned. It offers a future where The Power of the Dog, Roma and The Irishman can still get made.
- Paramount offers a slate built on acquired IP and sequel franchises. It offers a studio that admits its current output is underperforming and needs “recalibration.” It offers the Fox playbook: debt, consolidation, and the slow death of original development.
The question is not whether the 45-day window will be honoured in 2026. The question is whether, in 2031, Warner Bros. will still be making movies like Sinners and One Battle After Another—or whether it will be a hollowed-out label, producing Angry Birds 4 for a debt-laden parent company.
The evidence is in. And the ghost of 20th Century Fox is watching.
PART THREE: The Builder vs. The Buyers
Why Netflix’s Organic Rise is Hollywood’s Greatest Modern Achievement
The bidding war for Warner Bros. has been framed as a clash of titans: Netflix vs. Paramount Skydance, $82.7 billion vs. $108 billion, 45-day windows vs. “theatrical purity.” But beneath all the numbers and promises lies a deeper story that has gone largely untold.
Netflix built itself from nothing. Disney spent $100 billion buying its way to dominance. And Skydance is trying to do in months what Netflix took decades to achieve.
The difference matters.
The $100 Billion Question
Consider the paths:
| Company | Strategy | Cost | Timeline |
| Disney | Acquired Pixar ($7.4B), Marvel ($4B), Lucasfilm ($4B), Fox ($71B) | ~$90B+ | 2006-2019 |
| Paramount Skydance | Attempting to acquire Paramount, now Warner Bros. | ~$108B | 2024-2026 |
| Netflix | Built organically from DVD rentals to a global streaming giant | Minimal acquisitions until now | 1997-2025 |
As one analyst put it, Disney’s strategy was to buy the “crown jewel franchises” that others had built: Pixar’s animation empire, Marvel’s superhero universe, Lucasfilm’s Star Wars, Fox’s Avatar and Deadpool. It was a brilliant strategy, but it was not an act of creation. It was an act of acquisition.
Netflix, by contrast, spent its first eight years without spending “a dime on advertising,” focusing entirely on word-of-mouth and customer obsession. It built its recommendation engine from crowdsourced data on Usenet forums. It stuffed envelopes by hand. It refused to sell ads on its DVD mailers because “ads would only ruin the experience”.
This was not a company that bought its way to the top. This was a company that earned it.
The Jurassic Park Principle
In the film, John Hammond boasts that his scientists “spared no expense” to create dinosaurs from ancient DNA. But the lesson of the movie—and the novel—is that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. More importantly, just because you can buy something doesn’t mean you’ve built anything.
Netflix took the opposite approach. It didn’t try to acquire its way to relevance. It focused on three big bets:
- DVDs would replace VHS as the primary video format
- E-commerce would replace brick-and-mortar rental stores
- Streaming would eventually replace physical media entirely
Each bet was non-obvious at the time. Each required patience and conviction. And each paid off because Netflix built the infrastructure, the culture, and the customer relationships before it had the content library to match.
What Netflix Actually Built
By the time Netflix began investing heavily in original content, it already had:
- A global subscriber base that trusted the brand
- A recommendation engine that drove 80% of viewing
- A culture of creative freedom that attracted top talent
- A balance sheet strong enough to fund ambitious projects
When it finally did start making movies, it didn’t buy a studio. It became one. And the results speak for themselves:
| Achievement | Number |
| Golden Globe Wins | 42 [citation:part1] |
| Oscar Nominations | 160+ [citation:part1] |
| Original Films Annually | ~60 at peak [citation:part1] |
| Global Subscribers | 300M+ |
It took Disney decades and $100 billion to assemble its IP empire. Netflix built a comparable cultural footprint from scratch—with no theme parks, no century-old library, no inherited franchises.
The Skydance Shortcut
Now consider what Skydance is trying to do. David Ellison, backed by his father’s $150 billion fortune and Gulf sovereign wealth funds, is attempting to buy his way to the top.
There is no organic growth strategy here. There is no decade-long patient build. There is only a chequebook and a dream of instant scale.
| Skydance’s Path | Netflix’s Path |
| Buy Paramount | Build from DVDs |
| Buy Warner Bros. | Build original content |
| Acquire scale instantly | Earn scale over decades. |
| Debt-fuelled LBO | Organic cash flow |
The contrast could not be starker. One company grew by serving customers and taking calculated risks over 25 years. The other is trying to assemble an empire in 24 months using borrowed money and political connections.
The Deeper Meaning
This matters because corporate DNA matters. Companies that buy their way to scale behave differently from companies that build it.
- Acquirers are focused on integration, cost-cutting, and debt service. They have to make the numbers work, which means prioritising guaranteed returns over creative risks.
- Builders are focused on customers, culture, and long-term value. They have the freedom to take chances because they’re not constantly looking over their shoulder at the debt markets.
Netflix’s 2024 financials tell the story: revenue up 17.6%, net income up 29.4%, 24 million new subscribers. This is a company firing on all cylinders, with the cash flow to support ambitious filmmaking.
Skydance, by contrast, is asking Warner Bros. shareholders to trust that a debt-laden, acquisition-heavy strategy won’t repeat the mistakes of every other leveraged media buyout in history—from AOL-Time Warner to AT&T-Warner to Discovery-Warner.
The Lesson from Jurassic Park
The characters in Jurassic Park who tried to control nature with money and technology learned the hard way that some things can’t be bought. They had to be earned.
Netflix earned its place. It spent years in the trenches, obsessing over customers, doing things that didn’t scale, and building relationships with filmmakers based on trust, not contracts.
Skydance is trying to take the shortcut. It’s betting that billions of dollars can substitute for decades of relationship-building. It’s betting that Larry Ellison’s wealth can buy what Reed Hastings built.
But as Jurassic Park taught us, just because you can write a check doesn’t mean you understand what you’re buying.
The Choice
The Warner Bros. shareholders voting on March 20 have a choice between two visions:
- One vision is built on 25 years of organic growth, creative risk-taking, and a proven track record of supporting original filmmaking. It comes with manageable debt, a global subscriber base, and relationships with the world’s greatest directors.
- The other vision is built on borrowed money, political connections, and a strategy of acquiring rather than creating. It comes with $90 billion in debt, a slate of acquired IP, and no evidence that its leaders can sustain the creative renaissance Warner Bros. has built.
Netflix didn’t need to buy a studio to become a studio. It built one from scratch. That’s not just impressive. It’s unprecedented.
The question now is whether Warner Bros. wants to be part of that story—or become another cautionary tale about what happens when you try to buy what can only be built.
PART FOUR: The Gazump
Why Legacy Media Sat Down and Never Got Up
Netflix exists for the same reason Apple exists, and Uber, and Deliveroo. The incumbents weren’t giving customers what they wanted. They weren’t listening. They weren’t moving. And by the time they looked up, the world had passed them by.
You named the trinity: Kodak, Blockbuster, Blackberry. Each one had every advantage. Each one missed the moment. And each one paid the ultimate price.
The Pattern: Complacency Kills
| Company | What They Had | What They Missed | What Happened |
| Kodak | Invented the digital camera in 1975 | Understood the technology, but couldn’t imagine a world without film | Bankruptcy in 2012 |
| Blockbuster | 9,000 stores, $6 billion in revenue, the physical rental monopoly | Turned down an offer to buy Netflix for $50 million in 2000 | Liquidated in 2013 |
| Blackberry | 50% US market share, “Crackberry” addiction, secure enterprise network | Ignored the iPhone because “nobody wants a touchscreen” | 0% market share today |
Ferris Bueller said it in 1986: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
The legacy media executives weren’t just missing it. They were actively refusing to look.
What Customers Actually Wanted
Customers didn’t wake up one day wanting to destroy the theatrical window. They didn’t plot to kill linear television. They just wanted:
- To watch what they wanted, when they wanted
- To pay a fair price without being locked into bundles they didn’t need
- To discover new stories without having to guess what was playing at the multiplex
- Not to be treated like criminals for wanting to watch a movie at home
Blockbuster could have offered this. They had the stores, the inventory, the customer relationships. But they kept charging late fees because the revenue was too good to give up.
Kodak could have owned digital photography. They had the patents, the research, the brand. But they kept selling film because the margins were too good to abandon.
Blackberry could have built the iPhone. They had the keyboard loyalists, the enterprise contracts, and the secure network. But they kept making keyboards because “business users need to type.”
And the studios? They could have built Netflix. They had the libraries, the production capabilities, the talent relationships. But they kept protecting windows because the money was too good to disrupt.
The Netflix Difference
Netflix didn’t invent streaming. They didn’t invent DVDs by mail. They didn’t invent recommendation algorithms.
They just did what customers wanted.
| Customer Want | Incumbent Response | Netflix Response |
| No late fees | “Late fees are 16% of our revenue” | “We’ll mail you the next movie when you return the first one” |
| Watch anywhere | “You need a TV and a schedule” | “Stream on any device, anytime” |
| Pay one price | “Pay per rental, plus fees” | “Unlimited for $7.99” |
| Discover new content | “Here’s what’s in theatres this week” | “Here’s what you’ll love based on what you watched” |
As one analyst put it, Netflix’s early advantage wasn’t technology. It was “customer obsession”. They listened when others weren’t even in the room.
The Gazump
The gazump wasn’t last-minute. It was decades in the making. The incumbents had every chance to adapt. They chose not to.
| Industry | Incumbent | Gazumper | Year |
| Photography | Kodak | Smartphone cameras | 2000s |
| Video Rental | Blockbuster | Netflix (DVD by mail) | 2000 |
| Smartphones | Blackberry | Apple iPhone | 2007 |
| Music | Tower Records | iTunes / Spotify | 2003 |
| Taxis | Black cabs | Uber | 2010 |
| Food Delivery | Local takeaways | Deliveroo | 2013 |
| Television | Broadcast networks | Netflix (streaming) | 2013 |
In every case, the incumbent had the resources, the relationships, and the runway. In every case, they sat down. In every case, they got up too late.
The Warner Bros. Moment
This brings us back to March 20, 2026.
Warner Bros. is not Kodak. It’s not Blockbuster. It’s a studio in the middle of a creative renaissance, with 30 Oscar nominations, original hits like Sinners and Weapons, and a slate that balances franchise obligations with auteur gambles.
But it is also an incumbent facing a choice.
- Paramount Skydance offers the comfort of the familiar: a “historic studio” run by a tech-savvy heir, promising “robust theatrical windows” and “respect for heritage.” It sounds like the old world, preserved.
- Netflix offers the future: a company that has spent 25 years building what customers actually want, a proven track record of supporting original storytelling, and a balance sheet that can absorb the acquisition without crushing debt.
The irony is that the “traditional” choice—Paramount—is actually the risky one. It’s Blockbuster buying Netflix. It’s Kodak buying a digital camera company and trying to make it work alongside the film business. It’s the incumbent trying to preserve the old model while pretending to embrace the new.
The “disruptive” choice—Netflix—is actually the safe bet. It’s the company that has already proven it can adapt, already shown it can support filmmakers, and already built the infrastructure that customers actually want.
What Ferris Meant
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”
The legacy media executives didn’t just miss it. They refused to look. They sat in their screening rooms, counted their box office receipts, and assumed the world would keep spinning the way it always had.
But the 14-year-old girl with her dog-eared paperback didn’t care about their windows. The couple looking for a date night didn’t care about their release strategies. The subscriber paying $7.99 for unlimited access didn’t care about their decades of dominance.
They just wanted what they wanted. And when no one else would give it to them, Netflix did.
The Question
The Warner Bros. shareholders voting on March 20 are not just choosing between two bids. They are choosing between two relationships at the same time.
- Paramount represents the past, trying to buy its way into the future.
- Netflix represents the future that already arrived, while the past wasn’t looking.
The incumbents sat down. Netflix kept moving. And now, the question is whether Warner Bros. wants to sit with the sitters or move with the movers.
Ferris would know the answer.
PART FIVE: The Billionaire’s Playbook
How David Ellison’s Money is Breaking Democracy
The bidding war for Warner Bros. has been framed as a contest between two media giants. Netflix vs. Paramount. $27.75 vs. $31. 45-day windows vs. theatrical purity.
But beneath all the industry chatter lies something far more disturbing. The Ellison family is not just trying to buy a studio. They are demonstrating how private wealth can systematically dismantle the regulatory structures meant to check corporate power.
And they are doing it in plain sight.
The Mechanism: How Democracy Gets Bought
The reporting from The Hollywood Reporter reveals a coordinated strategy that goes far beyond normal merger tactics:
| Tactic | What It Achieves |
| Rapid second request compliance | Puts the DOJ on a 15-day clock, making meaningful review impossible |
| Flooding the zone with documents | Overwhelms career staff who don’t have time to properly review |
| Hiring Trump’s former antitrust chief | Ensures insider knowledge of exactly how the system can be gamed |
| Filing for approval before the deal is done | Creates a narrative of inevitability and cooperation |
| Direct access to political leadership | Allows career staff to be overruled when they raise concerns |
This is not a company seeking a fair review. This is a company engineering the outcome.
The Gail Slater Resignation: A Canary in the Coal Mine
The resignation of Gail Slater, the DOJ’s top antitrust cop, is the moment the mask slipped.
According to the reporting, Slater stepped down “amid mounting tension over her authority to pursue cases against large companies cosying up to the administration and going above her head to strike deals with higher-ups.”
Let that sink in. The person responsible for enforcing antitrust law resigned because she was being prevented from doing her job. Companies were going over her head. Deals were being struck with political appointees. The career staff were being neutered.
This is not how a functioning democracy operates. This is how a system dies.
The Makan Delrahim Connection
Makan Delrahim, Trump’s former Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust, is now Paramount’s Chief Legal Officer and the architect of this merger strategy.
| Delrahim’s Role | What It Enables |
| Former head of the DOJ Antitrust | Knows every lever, every weakness, every pressure point |
| Former lobbyist for Google, Comcast, and Caesars | Understands how to navigate the revolving door |
| Architect of Paramount’s merger blueprint | Designed the strategy that is now disabling regulatory review |
This is the ultimate expression of the revolving door. The person who once ran the agency now designs the strategy to defeat it. And he’s using his insider knowledge to ensure that career staff—the people who actually do the work—are rendered powerless.
What “Cosying Up” Actually Means
The phrase “cosying up to the administration” sounds almost quaint. It suggests friendly meetings and polite conversations.
But what’s actually happening is far more sinister:
| Action | Effect |
| Direct access to political leadership | Career staff’s concerns are ignored or overruled. |
| Lobbying campaigns targeting specific officials | Creates pressure to approve deals regardless of merit |
| Strategic document dumps | Overwhelms the government’s capacity to review |
| Timing manoeuvres | Forces rushed decisions or no decisions at all. |
The Slater resignation proves this isn’t paranoia. The person in charge of antitrust enforcement resigned because she couldn’t do her job. The system is broken. And it’s broken by design.
The Ellison Difference
Every large corporation tries to influence the government. That’s not new. What’s new is the scale and sophistication of the Ellison operation.
| Dimension | Typical Corporation | Ellison Operation |
| Political access | Lobbyists, PAC contributions | Direct family relationship with Trump |
| Regulatory strategy | Hire former officials | Hire the former head of the agency |
| Legal manoeuvring | Fight in court | Design the process to make review impossible |
| Wealth backing | Corporate treasury | Larry Ellison’s $150 billion personal fortune |
This is not a company trying to navigate the regulatory system. This is a family using its billions to disable the regulatory system entirely.
The 15-Day Clock: A Weapon, Not a Milestone
The reporting reveals that Paramount completed its second request compliance in “a couple of months”—a process that normally takes over a year. This means that once the deal is signed, the DOJ will have just 15 days to file a lawsuit to block it.
Fifteen days to review what is likely millions of documents. Fifteen days to build a legal case against one of the most complex mergers in history. Fifteen days, while the company that flooded them with documents smiles and says, “We’re just following the process.”
This is not good faith. This is warfare.
What the Senate Democrats Are Asking
The letter from Booker, Schumer, Klobuchar, Warren, and others is not just political theatre. They’re demanding:
- All communications involving President Donald Trump
- All communications with lobbyists
- All communications with Justice Department officials
They’re building a record. They’re documenting the fix. And they’re signalling that if Democrats retake power, this deal will be investigated—and those involved will be held accountable.
But that’s a big “if.” And in the meantime, the deal will have closed, the assets will have been transferred, and the Ellison family will have achieved what no amount of democratic process could stop.
The Danger
The Ellison family is not just buying a studio. They are buying:
- The former head of antitrust enforcement
- The ability to overwhelm the government with documents
- The clock that prevents meaningful review
- The political access that overrules career staff
- The entire regulatory apparatus itself
Gail Slater didn’t resign because she was tired. She resigned because she watched her agency being dismantled from within by people with more money and better access than the public could ever hope to match.
The Irony
The companies being acquired—Warner Bros., with its 30 Oscar nominations, its original films, its creative renaissance—will become trophies in this exercise of power. The filmmakers who trusted the system will watch their projects get shelved. The audiences who believed in something different will get more sequels, more IP, and more of the same.
And the people who made it happen will move on to the next target, having learned that in modern America, if you have enough money, you don’t need to win the argument. You just need to disable the people who disagree.
The Choice
The Warner Bros. shareholders voting on March 20 aren’t just choosing between two bids. They’re choosing whether to be complicit in this dismantling.
- Netflix offers a path through the existing regulatory system. It’s not perfect. But it’s a system that still functions, where career staff can do their jobs and deals are reviewed on their merits.
- Paramount offers a path through a broken system. It’s faster, more certain—if you define certainty as the confidence that your money has already bought the outcome.
Gail Slater resigned because she couldn’t do her job. The question is whether the rest of us will notice, and whether we’ll do anything about it before the next agency falls.