Hollywood as we know it is sick — not the kind of sick you might usually think of with the woke agenda pushing, child-actor grooming, and all the rest — but the "sick and dying" kind of sick.
Netflix’s Chief Global Affairs Officer warned Monday that Hollywood will suffer billions of dollars worth of job losses if rival Paramount Skydance succeeds in buying Warner Bros. Discovery out from under the streaming giant's buyout bid.
During an interview on Fox Business Network, Clete Willems said, "Paramount has identified $6 billion in synergies in the offer that they made, which is code for $6 billion in job cuts."
“They have what we call the Noah’s Ark problem," Willems continued, "which is, if they effectuate this deal, they’re going to have two of everything."
There's also the matter of debt. The Paramount offer is generous, but requires billions in financing — including personal security guarantees from Oracle multibillionaire Larry Ellison, whose son David runs Paramount. So when Willems says Paramount will "have to cut, cut, cut," if the studios merge, he's probably right.
But similar downsizing wouldn't happen when and if Netflix buys Warner, instead?
Color me skeptical that Netflix's bid magically spares the axe — especially when it already churns out content like it's going out of style (which, quality-wise, it often is). Netflix wants Warner more for its old intellectual properties for streaming than it does for its production facilities or crews. Netflix already spews out plenty of content on its own, seemingly without much care about actual quality in most cases. The last thing Netflix needs is probably more output; it just needs that sweet, sweet Warner IP to fill the streaming hours.
"Cut, cut, cut," indeed.
Regardless, either buyout likely means the end of Warner Bros. as Hollywood has known it for just over a century — and that, gentle reader, is the absolute least of Hollywood's troubles. Or maybe I need to rephrase that bit. Maybe Hollywood is the sickness, and Los Angeles is the patient at risk of dying.
The Hollywood Reporter featured a telling report in recent weeks, headlined with a dire warning for the City of Angels: "Los Angeles’ Hold on Hollywood Is Slipping." When 2025 wrapped, Hollywood tallied up its Los Angeles-based production figures, and the numbers were stark at best.
"Superhero movies have fled to London," HR's Erik Hayden wrote, and "three major studios (Netflix, Paramount and Lionsgate) have inked expansive deals to build or lease in new production bases in New Jersey; states like Georgia, Louisiana and New Mexico are fighting for their share of projects with generous tax incentives while Illinois is becoming a player in its own right."
The result is that in 2025, there were almost as few productions in L.A. as there were during the panic-fueled COVID lockdowns. Read that again — and it's close, too. Hollywood's Los Angeles shoots dropped almost in half during COVID, from over 36,000 in 2019 to just under 19,000 in 2020. Things bounced back almost immediately when the lockdowns ended, right back up to 37k.
But something happened in 2023, and that number dropped precipitously to 24,000.
Last year? Just 19,694 shoots in L.A.— barely above the 2020 lockdown abyss, yet it's boom times anywhere that isn't business-hostile California.
Streaming killed Hollywood's movie theater cash cow without even pretending to look for a golden goose first. Instead of enjoying a night out at the movies, anonymous Hollywood screenwriting veteran George MF Washington warned in 2022, "streaming subscribers expect a constant firehose of content fired directly into their faces 24/7/365."
Now the largest streamer is about to buy one of Hollywood's oldest and most storied studios, just as Los Angeles plumbs COVID-era depths of disaster with no relief in sight.
Hollywood is sick, but it might be Los Angeles that's dying.
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