The Inevitable Squeeze
For years, the game was simple: create content, sell it, repeat. Now, it’s a ridiculously expensive arms race. The likes of Netflix are spending billions, not millions, on new shows and films every year. How is a smaller, traditional studio meant to compete with that? It’s like bringing a well-crafted, artisanal knife to a gunfight. You might have the heritage, but you’re going to get blown away.
This is why consolidation is no longer a choice, it’s an inevitability. Companies are looking at their balance sheets, then at the colossal content budgets of their rivals, and realising it’s far cheaper to buy a competitor’s library and audience than to build one from scratch. The Paramount deal has simply made it acceptable to admit this out loud. It has forced everyone else’s hand, and now the industry is rife with speculation about who might be next on the chopping block, or rather, the acquisition list.