Films & Fiction Weekly

The word is out that Netflix is considering making a bid for Warner Bros., just a few days after Paramount expressed interest in buying the studio too. I’m not going to defend WB, they’ve made a lot of bad choices in recent years, but any kind of buyout would be bad right now. What we most definitely don’t need in Hollywood is more consolidation and corporatism, crushing smaller studios and destroying creativity.

After all, what would Netflix want it for? I think the obvious reason is IP. Look at Disney, who’ve been running on the fumes of exhausted franchises for the last decade or more. When you own so much intellectual property, you can make hundreds of millions a year just from licensing and rereleases alone.

This could also let Netflix enter into the theatrical market. They’ve been releasing more movies for limited runs recently, and having the power and experience of WB would be a big help. Yet it would hardly benefit theatres. However much they might experiment with cinemas, Netflix’s core model is subscription-based. That’s where their money and fans are. No doubt they would release WB movies in theatres, but there would be an even bigger rush to get them onto streaming–though Warner is hardly innocent of this, having put Superman on HBO Max barely two months after its theatrical debut.

There would be a genuine irony to it, though, as for years Hollywood has been trying to copy Netflix’s model, attempting to compete directly with it rather than sticking to what they did best. This led to them creating their own streaming sites and big-budget shows, while rushing to get their films onto them, so as to cut out the cinemas from the profits. Well, how’s that working out for them?

It would be tragically funny if Netflix and Amazon were the only entertainment companies left in a few years. I’d be much more willing to defend Hollywood studios if they hadn’t been making so much bad stuff recently, but after watching Jurassic World: Rebirth and Alien: Earth, it’s hard to be on their side.

Alien: 3.14159…

Another week, another dreadful episode of Alien: Earth, where we got a talking sheep, and I’m not even joking.

As we’ve seen for the past couple of episodes, the “eyeball” alien has been placed into a sheep’s body, and to test its intelligence, Boy Kavalier showed it the first few digits of Pi and asked it to complete the sequence. Well, it got it wrong, but that’s on the writers; the thing is, why would it know Pi at all? Why especially would it understand Arabic numerals?

I’ve seen it argued that the creature somehow gets information from people it takes control of, so essentially it learnt how to read numbers from the Maginot’s engineer. Fine, whatever, but why does it know Pi? It’s not an advanced organism that’s going to be doing mathematical calculations or building a civilization. It’s a parasite that inhabits other bodies, and not a very smart one. It ignored the dozens of dead humans on the Maginot and chose to infest half a cat instead. Why does nothing in this show make any sense?

Still only one more episode to go…

Hollywood digs up Stan Lee

An AI Stan Lee will be appearing at LA Comic Con, where guests can pay to see and speak with it, even getting selfies. Despite what some people are saying, I don’t think this actually involves Disney, being created by a company called Kartoon Studios, but even so, it’s typical that even when you’re dead, you’ll still be used and exploited in Hollywood.

Don’t think this will be a one-off thing either. It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s popular: it only matters whether or not it’s successful. If it is, then this kind of thing will only get worse.

Maybe it’s time for Hollywood to end.