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As Paramount, WB Discovery and Others Weigh M&A Options, Is More Consolidation Really the Answer to Hollywood’s Profit Problem?
As Shari Redstone, David Zaslav and other executives weigh mergers and acquisitions, is consolidation really the answer for big tech and Wall Street?
It’s becoming clear to many that dealmaking to bulk up on content and distribution assets is no longer the cure for the industry’s problems that it’s been since the 1990 nuptials of Time Inc. and Warner Communications; the threat to Hollywood’s old ways of making money posed by the rise of streaming platforms is too dire and too fundamental. Simply put, Hollywood is worn out from what one analyst describes as the “media M&A merry-go-round” of recent years — notably AT&T and Time Warner in 2018, Disney and 21st Century Fox in 2019, Viacom and CBS (which became Paramount Global) also in 2019, followed quickly by the WarnerMedia and Discovery transaction completed in April 2022. WB Discovery’s fortunes have also been significantly boosted by two surprise megahits last year: “Barbie,” which raked in $1.4 billion in worldwide box office, and video game “Hogwarts Legacy,” which generated $850 million in revenue in its first two weeks of release last February.
Or read this on Variety