General TV News

[Hatredsheart]

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj69xzpzrdyo

[Wrathbone]

This level of monopoly can’t be good in general, but I’d much rather have Paramount win than Netflix. Netflix would cause the death of cinema (as we know it, at least) and physical media.

[eny]

Guess who is involved in the funding? Kushner, SA, Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

[Animalmother]

So this is why Trump is suddenly concerned about it then.

[Wrathbone]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz687wv9vqxo

Paramount had said its offer was "superior" to a $72bn deal that Warner Bros struck with Netflix for its film and streaming businesses.

But Warner Bros's board "unanimously" recommended a rejection of the offer and agreed the deal with Netflix was in the firm's best interests, a statement to shareholders said.

Welp. So long, cinema.

[Raid]

Was there actually a good ending here? The Paramount bid was the one backed by Saudi Arabia and Jared Kushner.

[Wrathbone]

No, probably not. Netflix winning means every film they produce will have that generic Netflix sheen of uniformity and banality. It also means talented directors who insist on theatrical releases will be eschewed in favour of directors who will make do with going straight to streaming. And once Paramount's 5 year physical media deal expires, discs from WB will almost certainly end for good.

[Raid]

It's a really minor point in the scheme of things, but Warner Bros. are the company that own HBO. HBO are the company that bankroll Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which is one of the few in-depth outlets for US current affairs I actually trust. I am extremely glad there's not going to be a link between that programme's purse strings and the White House via Kushner, as I think Oliver's one of the few obviously liberal late-night show hosts not being threatened at the moment.

[Raid]

The next Star Wars animated series got a trailer last night. It's set in the Post-Clone Wars, Pre-Galactic Civil War era, and honestly I'm not sure where the story's going to go. For those that haven't watched any of the animated stuff (which I maintain was, at least until Andor, the best TV and film the franchise has presented in over a decade), Maul did in fact survive being cut in half in The Phantom Menace and became an extremely popular recurring villain, helped in no small part by Sam Witwer's excellent performances. He does become something of a criminal underlord, which is what I was expecting this series to focus on, but that's not really what the trailer's suggesting.

The main series animated stuff (Clone Wars, Rebels, Bad Batch) really has matured over the years. They've always been aimed at a young-mid-teen audience on the surface, so you don't typically see people being sliced in half with lightsabers (though it's clearly still implied), but the story-telling and character development are much better than almost anything else Disney have put out. I genuinely think the second half of Rebels challenges Empire Strikes Back in terms of quality and impact, though you do have to accept some slightly weirder aspects of The Force. Now that Dave Filoni, who was the lead on the animated series before he went into the live-action stuff, has taken over from Kathleen Kennedy (at long bloody last, I've been calling for that to happen for years), I'm hoping we're going to get more of this.