Intro for October 24, 2025

Dear Gossips,  

All week I’ve been watching the headlines and the developing story about Warner Bros. Discovery’s potential sale to another studio. The news came Tuesday morning with “multiple parties circl[ing]” the studio, followed just hours later with reports that WBD’s stock hit a three-year high with news of the potential sale. Good for the stock, though I sort of feel like we should automatically shut down anything that makes Wall Street happy. Wall Street is completely divorced from Main Street at this point.

Reportedly the newly merged Paramount Skydance, led by billionaire nepo dweeb David Ellison, is leading the charge, making at least two offers to WBD, both of which have been rejected—so far. But WBD is now doing a “review of strategic alternatives to identify the best path forward to unlock the full value of our assets.” Nothing people love more than unlocking the full value of assets, especially shareholders. Hey, did you know that WBD CEO David Zaslav own millions in shares and stock options? 

It’s been obvious since his tenure began that Zaslav’s reign (of terror) at WBD was about slashing and burning as much debt as he could to maximize WBD’s appeal as an acquisition target, and on Thursday Zaz announced Warner Bros. Discovery is up for auction as they review multiple bids for the company. That losing one of the most venerable studios in Hollywood to a merger is bad for the studio, its employees, the film industry at large, and consumers doesn’t matter to anyone. What matters is that Wall Street desk jockeys get to come every time a merger is completed. 

But make no mistake, this is bad for cinema as an art form and as an industry. The Disney-Fox merger was good for no one—not even Disney!—reducing the number of productions made, and thus the number of jobs in the industry, reducing access to Fox’s repertory titles—just try booking one of their films for a retro screening—and, costing tens of thousands of people their jobs, and, allegedly, clogging up the residuals pipeline for people who worked on Fox productions. Allegedly, Disney claims they don’t have to pay Fox royalties/residuals because they didn’t negotiate those deals, which is hogwash. You buy the parent company, you inherit the contracts. You can’t buy a chicken and then say you’re not responsible for the eggs. The chicken is going to lay eggs, regardless, they’re yours to pick up. 

A Warner Brothers merger will be the same song, different verse. Tens of thousands of people will lose their jobs, there will be less productions which means less work in the industry, consumer costs will undoubtedly go up, and there will be plenty of ways for a new owner to f-ck with Warner Brothers’ library the same way Disney f-cks with Fox’s. On top of all of that, Donald Trump, who is friends with Larry Ellison, father of Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, is throwing his weight around, letting it be known he favors Paramount Skydance in a potential merger, a deeply unethical but hardly surprising abuse of power as shareholders are poised to review offers. 

It seems inevitable, though. The main difference between the 19th century’s Gilded Age and our new Gilded Age is that none of the billionaires are benevolent. There isn’t a rich person who has the will to spend heaps of money on public beneficence. There is no one to buy Warner Brothers and preserve it as a legacy studio—one that is actually doing very well! They’ve had a great year! Warner Brothers was and could be again a thriving film and television studio. But no one is aiming for that. The top shareholders—which includes David Zaslav—want their payday, and David Ellison wants to feed us all into an AI woodchipper. 

The rich used to build libraries, universities, theaters, and great parks, they used to fund artists and writers to create beauty and entertainment for the masses. Sure, they were as anti-union and anti-consumer as any wealth-hoarder in history, but at least us peons got some nice third spaces and entertainment out of it. Today all we get is an AI chatbot trying to talk us into killing ourselves while lying about the plot of Moby Dick. 

Live long and gossip,

Sarah