It feels like every headline I wake up to in 2025 is some sort of notification that one company is being swallowed up by another one, and what we're supposed to do about it. The fact is that the creative industry of Hollywood is slowly following itself as new studios emerge and older studios combine. The ink is barely dry on the massive Paramount-Skydance merger, which just closed in August, creating a new (and hopefully more stable) entity run by David Ellison. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery—itself the product of a recent merger—is now for sale, and hearing bids from all over. As a writer in Hollywood, I am shedding tears seeing buyers disappear; things are already very hard! But to feel better about the situation, I decided to research and learn why everyone is buying, selling, or merging right now. And it boils down to three main drivers: the end of the streaming wars, a mountain of debt, and a frantic arms race for "universes."Let's dive in.The Streaming Wars We've been talking about streaming for as long as I've worked at NFS, and we'll continue long after my time is done. It's become the major driver in Hollywood and a way for these studios to make a lot of money. For the last decade, the game was simple: Subscriber growth at all costs. Netflix burned billions on content to get to 250 million subs. Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock all did the same, losing staggering amounts of money to catch...
Published By: NoFilmSchool - Yesterday