Ed Matuskey

F-18 pilot had their Wheaties that morning! Although in all seriousness, it's probably easy to shoot down better aircraft when they have you designated a "friendly." :p

Michigan J Frog reaping all the other media outlets he’s murdered knocking on Oracle’s door

Yeah, I believe the dark horse outcome is the shareholders picking Netflix anyway--if Netflix had literally pulled out, they'd be on the hook for a penalty themselves I think. I'd love it, but even Netflix doesn't think that's likely based on their statement, so I'm not getting my hopes up!

I'm hearing shades of Twitter's sale to Musk there, heh--though in this case Ellison isn't actively trying to get out of the deal (yet).

It would be pretty funny if the end result of all this is Paramount pays both Netflix /and/ WB, and ends up with no sale. :D

And Bob is right--Paramount & WB are already short of guaranteed moneymakers, and that would be with competent leadership. Will the new HP series no-one asked for move the needle? A new Trek franchise? Even more DC movies aren't guaranteed to be good enough at this point.

Definitely possible, but I'm not convinced: based on their forays into gaming, I'm not sure they have the patience for the boom/bust world that is media--they're just as likely to bail when they don't get an immediate return, IMO.

You and me both, friend--Netflix was the (IMO much) lesser of two evils, but it still would have been much better for WB to stay unsold. But Zaslav has been working to sell off WBD pretty much as soon as he got put in charge (again, IMO)--Paramount just started the process a year early I think.

That's the crux of my argument: Netflix didn't need to try and buy WB if they just wanted to keep making streaming content. The fact that they made a serious offer implies--to me at least--that they wanted to make something else alongside the streaming content. Otherwise why bother?

And by "smaller audience" I mean MAGA, as Paramount's repeated efforts to alter programming to shield the Trump administration have demonstrated to me. Who knows, they may boot Gunn and try to bring Snyder back because that demographic liked Zach's portrayal more.

I think if Netflix bought a movie studio, it would be to make movies--they didn't need WB if they just wanted to keep making streaming/second screen content. It would have been (IMO) a parallel product line, not bound to the same constraints as the streaming content. But who knows.

"Shareholders--and no-one else." Zaslav is finally closing in on endgame: getting the biggest payday possible after stripping the studio down as much as possible.

Do you honestly believe we'd get a Superman like we just got from Ellison & co?

And of course, as I said at the start, I expect many more layoffs in a Paramount-WB merger than I expected from a Netflix-WB one, due to many more redundancies between the two studios.

Compare that with the Ellisons who, in their short time at Paramount, have shown their willingness to tank their own property to please a small audience. Unlike Netflix, their goal seems to be something other than to entertain, and I expect WB's output to suffer as a result.

If all they wanted was WB's library for streaming, they could have just tried to buy that. The fact that they wanted to buy the studio says they wanted to be more than a streamer--which is smart with how crowded the market has become. Their track record points to trying to entertain.

My money's on Netflix being able to scoop up the combined company for a song in less than five years if the merger goes through. :p I'm bitterly disappointed, but can't blame Netflix for walking away. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown."

And I disagree with that as well. I won't die on a hill for Netflix, but they've produced a lot of great content over the years, from The Dragon Prince, to Enola Holmes, to Lockwood & Co to frickin' /Sandman/ etc etc. They're too quick to cancel shows, but it's hardly all generic content.

That's the one silver lining: the Ellisons are already showing they're not great at this, so now they may fail twice as fast. Netflix may wind up buying both studios for a song before too long.

Myself, I'm very curious to see how the shareholders actually vote.

Disagree: I believe the co-CEO who said Netflix wouldn't buy something just to destroy it. The group that bought Paramount and hopes to get WB, on the other hand, has already shown their goal is not to make the best entertainment they can, but to control the narrative and please a smaller audience.

Boo! I suppose the shareholders could still vote for the "inferior" offer if they want to--though that would require them to care more about the long term prospects of WB and its employees than a bigger payday, so it probably won't happen.

Welcome to the party, pal. Next up, you'll wonder if it really needs to go that late, and be that loud.

I've been to a children's section in an old cemetery: rows and rows of potential snuffed out before they even had a chance. Get your kids vaccinated--there are plenty of other terrible things that can happen to them, no need to make their chances any worse.

Ha, fun--and tricky! Without thinking about it too much:

1) I want to say Elsa Bloodstone but she's not technically a mutant, so: Firestar.
2) I'm going to expand this to the Rings of Power series so I can pick Bronwyn
3) Zatanna
4) Troi

Oh good, I wasn't the only one who got uneasy at the "Let's use lost dogs to sell the surveillance state" commercial.

Reminds me of all the 3rd party D&D Kickstarters that say their game is "compatible with the most popular TTRPG," rather than "D&D compatible."

Woooo! Although, now that MST3K is owned by a big company, how much of this do you get to keep? :p

Gen X'er here, and I can confirm that we are all super bitter at the loss of cubicles in exchange for high density seating. We made fun of "hedgehog farms," we cheered Neo breaking out--and we didn't know how good we had it (both in terms of plentiful white collar work and QoL in the workplace).

Just watched the first two episodes and am utterly charmed.

Fantastic news: you are now fully in charge of your own destiny! Woo-hoo!