The end of big-screen cinema? What Netflix hopes to achieve by buying Warner Bros

C orporate Hollywood has undergone huge upheavals in recent years – as consequential, perhaps, as the 1970s and 80s, when the studio marques that had made their names in the movies’ golden age were being bought up by international conglomerates. The acquisition of Warner Bros – legendary for crime pictures in the 40s and 50s, and Batman movies in the 90s and 00s – by a streaming service feels particularly significant, coming as it does on the back of the merger of Paramount with Skydance Media earlier this year and, in 2019, Disney’s purchase of fellow studio 21st Century Fox .

What is most evident in all these deals is how streaming services have changed the game. Disney’s buying spree – which had previously included Marvel, Star Wars and Pixar – in retrospect looks essentially like