Streaming Killed Theaters, Storytelling, and Entertainment

Video Description

On December 5, 2025, Netflix announced that it has agreed to acquire the film studio, streaming, and entertainment businesses of Warner Bros. Discovery for somewhere between $72 and $83 billion dollars in enterprise value. This merger would give Netflix control of WB’s core assets in production studios and the HBO brand and the HBO Max streaming service, which would essentially merge into Netflix, but more importantly, Netflix would gain ownership of some of the largest franchises in the world, like Harry Potter, the Lord of the Rings film rights, Superman, Batman, Game of Thrones, Looney Tunes, and countless more. A deal like this is massive, and it requires lots of nuance in its discussion, yes, but from the most sincere position as your friendly, neighborhood fake wizard who analyzes the entertainment business—this is very bad. What we’re looking at here is something that seemingly keeps happening in lots of industries: mega corporations buy up and consume other companies in efforts to not only constrict the entire marketplace but also gain monopolization and complete control of said marketplace. Disney bought Lucasfilm, Pixar, Marvel, 20th Century Fox, and most recently Hulu. Amazon bought MGM, Twitch, and Audible. Sony bought Crunchyroll in 2021; I didn’t know that till I researched for this video. In anime streaming, a lot of people say that Crunchyroll bought Funimation. That’s not true; Sony owned Funimation, bought Crunchyroll, merged the two, and dumped the Funimation name. Now it’s just Sony’s Crunchyroll. In gaming we see Microsoft acting like a Kraken pulling countless flagship companies down to the depths, acquiring Zenimax Bethesda, Rare, Mojang, Obsidian, Compulsion, Playground, Ninja Theory, Double Fine, and of course Blizzard-Activision. Tencent, one of China’s largest entertainment investment firms, is gearing up to acquire all of the most valuable Ubisoft properties for pennies on the dollar. Sony, again, bought Insomniac, Bungie, and Sucker Punch, to name a few. And Nintendo is over here saying this past November that they’re gearing up to buy more companies too, almost like it’s a threat to the world. Followed by a few days ago, Nintendo acquired the Bandai Namco division in Singapore, rebranding it to Nintendo Studios Singapore. And all of this. All of these acquisitions, all of these monopolization efforts, in today’s marketplace, well, they’re happening for lots of different reasons; there are tax benefits and investment incentives, yes, but the main priority for acquiring all these other companies is because of streaming. All of these companies directly have or share in some kind of streaming service. The “streaming” market benefits all of these companies in some way. And we will define streaming for this discussion as accessing digital goods from an aggregate service. Gamepass, Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Crunchyroll, Paramount Plus, Prime Video, Ubisoft Plus, PlayStation Plus, and heck, even TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram fit this criteria now. It’s all part of the streaming business model. And I’m here to tell you that streaming has killed creativity. It’s destroyed cinemas. It certainly hasn’t helped video gaming. No one knows how to tell a good story anymore. And the collective consumers, allowing all of this to take place because convenience is addicting, have no concept of how bad things have become, and they never will because things are just going to get worse. • • • Try the Wizard's Hot Cocoa https://FakeWizard.com • • • Discover NEW Games from Indie Developers Visit https://FakePortal.com • • • Get Connected: ⤿ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reallifefakewizard ⤿ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/reallifefakewiz ⤿ Join the Discord: http://WizardSanctuary.com/ ⤿ See More from Fake Wiz: https://www.FakeWizard.com FAN MAIL: Real Life Fake Wizard 1003 Mulford Ct. P.O. Box 1602 Knightdale, NC 27545 #netflix #strangerthings #RealLifeFakeWizard