January 2, 2026

Streaming and social costs

Admittedly, there is an element of preciousness in all the worry over Warner Bros. being gobbled up by Netflix. After all, it has been a long, long time since studio head Jack Warner roamed the backlot of the studio responsible for such classic films as Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and Now, Voyager. Furthermore, like all movie studios, Warner Bros. is no stranger to being incorporated into larger, seemingly unlikely corporations: In 1969, the studio, which, having already been purchased by Seven Arts, was then known as Warner Bros.-Seven Arts, was acquired by the little-remembered Kinney National Service, whose portfolio of businesses included such inspiring enterprises as operating parking garages. The next time you watch Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange, note that an opening credit identifies Warner Bros. as “A Kinney Company.” Does the fact that Kubrick’s universally acclaimed masterpiece was, apparently, funded by parking garage revenue make its notably unpromising vision of the future more or less dystopian?