As someone who spent much of my career in banking and law before finding a second act (hopefully) in screenwriting, I have a habit of looking at business news a little differently than most writers.
The proposed merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. has generated exactly the reaction you would expect.
Some see the end of competition. Others see the beginning of a stronger competitor.
The only certainty, at least for now, is that an extraordinary number of lawyers, investment bankers, economists, consultants, and public relations professionals will be paid handsomely before the final credits roll. The transaction has already drawn intense regulatory scrutiny, shareholder negotiations, talent and union opposition and litigation, ensuring that legal and advisory fees alone will run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The argument against the merger is familiar: fewer studios mean fewer buyers, fewer opportunities for filmmakers, possible layoffs, and less competition. A coalition of state attorneys general has sued to block the transaction on precisely those grounds, arguing that it would reduce competition and ultimately harm consumers.
Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously. But there is another side to the discussion.
Hollywood today isn’t competing against the Hollywood of twenty years ago.
It’s competing against Netflix, Disney, Amazon, Apple, Sony and a rapidly changing global entertainment marketplace. The competitive landscape extends far beyond the traditional legacy studios. As we have seen, influencers are the new studio heads.
Producing a genuine blockbuster has become an astonishingly expensive undertaking. Tentpole films routinely require hundreds of millions of dollars in production and marketing before a single ticket is sold. Few companies possess both the balance sheet and the global distribution network to assume that level of risk, year after year.
At the same time, we’re living through what may prove to be a golden age for independent creators.
Affordable production technology, sophisticated editing software, virtual collaboration, crowdfunding, and direct access to audiences have lowered barriers that once kept most stories from ever reaching a screen. Every week, filmmakers with modest budgets produce work that would have been nearly impossible twenty years ago.
Take a film like Obsession. With a production budget of $750,000 and a current global gross of $427 million, the film demonstrates that compelling storytelling no longer depends exclusively on a studio lot or a nine-figure budget. I’m sure the Paramount/Warner lawyers will use Obsession as an example of how a bigger studio will NOT stifle independent film.
Creativity has become increasingly decentralized, and that’s healthy for the industry.
Hollywood still needs studios with the financial muscle to produce the next Top Gun: Maverick, Dune, or Avatar. Those films create shared cultural moments that we truly love and remind audiences why the movies still matter.
But just as important is the continued rise of independent filmmakers willing to tell intimate and unconventional personal stories. They are expanding—not replacing—the creative landscape.
As a former banker, I’ve learned that scale isn’t automatically the enemy of competition. In fact, sometimes scale is what allows competition to survive.
The real question isn’t whether Hollywood should remain exactly as it was. The question is whether stronger studios create better opportunities to finance ambitious films that otherwise might never leave development.
Every screenplay eventually needs someone with both the imagination to believe in it and the resources to bring it to life; big or small.
Reasonable people can disagree about whether this merger ultimately serves audiences, artists, employees, and investors. That’s why antitrust law exists: to evaluate whether competition will be negatively and materially impacted.
My instinct is that if meaningful competition remains from multiple well-capitalized studios and streaming platforms, bigger isn’t necessarily worse. Bigger may simply be what’s required to finance the next generation of films that audiences still line up to see on big screens and the neighborhood theater.
Perhaps the future of cinema isn’t a choice between Hollywood and independent film.
Perhaps it takes both. Studios with the scale to dream big. Independent creators with the freedom to dream differently.
As someone who has spent a career watching capital find opportunity—and now spends his days trying to turn his stories into films, that strikes me as a future worth rooting for.
