The failed merger and similar clawback clause between Kroger and Albertsons is currently destroying a significant part of the supply chain for food in the Pacific Northwest. Grocery stores that have been open for 50-75 years - stores where whole neighborhoods and towns were built around - are closing forever, leaving those areas as food deserts.
Either way, this entertainment merger is going to get ugly. Consumers are absolutely going to get harmed either way with that clawback clause.
I don't understand how that kind of clause can be legal. Its existence puts anti-trust enforcement in a catch-22, either they allow the merger, which reduces competition, or they reject it, and the acquiree is decimated, also reducing competition.
> I don't understand how that kind of clause can be legal.
Arguably they promote a chilling effect around acquisitions, which does help competition: "don't try to buy something unless you're prepared to deal with a possible fallout" should result in fewer attempts at consolidating dominant positions.
I'd almost be tempted to posit that such a clause should become mandatory for deals over a certain threshold (e.g. $1bn), with amounts determined according to certain parameters.
Best you can get is Aliens vs Predator vs Terminator comic book (if you are 10 years old you can like it, it is betterr than most AvP stuff but that is a low hanging bar)
I mean the franchise didnt get anything top tier apart from Aliens labirynth and the vP 2 game from.. 2001?
I’m not sure it’s a fair comparison, groceries that sell food on one hand and a brainwashing and propaganda delivery system (see History of criminal, industry/advertiser, FBI, CIA, Pentagon, and foreign nation direct ties to the industry) masquerading as “entertainment” on the other.
You don’t have to be “harmed”, just do not pay them your money. Problem solved. If the prospect of not being “entertained” fills you with anxiety and frustration, maybe that’s something to reflect on.
That makes no logical sense. So if I give up my “entertainment” subscriptions because the execs need their bonuses and drive the prices up to compensate for the penalty, causing me to think about how to spend quality time with my family paying games, reading books, and doing activities; is equally harmful as if I can’t but groceries in my town because the grocery store was closed?
I live a couple blocks down from one that was open for 40+ years. I use Amazon now for my groceries. I was gonna use Safeway but their prices are high.
Except you need food to live and tv shows are an artificially scarce resource that's actually free to distribute in unlimited quantities, so the harm is very different.
I've watched and enjoyed Andor since, but yeah other than that zero star wars movies and TV shows since episode 8. I hear 9 was also hilariously bad, but I'll not ever bother seeing it.
Seems like a bad example. The problem with Episode 8 was not lack of creativity. Episode 7 was a complete retread of "A New Hope" and a bigger offender. At least blue Jedi milk is new.
Episode 8 was a retread of Empire Strikes Back (ships chase through empty space while the main character trains with the old master on a wild planet). It seemed subversive just because ESB was subversive relative to ANH.
Episode 8 was subversive because it had self aware moments "trolling" the audience throughout like Luke mocking the idea Rey (and the audience) thought he would pick up a lightsaber again.
It also has weird "subversive" dialogue about sacrifice being bad that doesn't really fit what's happening in the movie itself where sacrifice of two characters saves the day. Which is "subversive" in the sense that a movie with dialogue saying "this is a shitty movie plot" is subversive.
It also rips off the ending of Return of the Jedi by killing the main bad guy so is "subversive" in that it trolls whoever was stuck making episode 9 without a functional villain.
Maybe 3rd. Jedi is gorgeous but the script for everything past Jabba’s Palace is a mess. Doesn’t know what to do with all its characters, feels the need to have them all around anyway.
If 8 had followed through on its narrative promises, it would have had a chance. But unfortunately, much like a modern LLM that exceeds its context window, it lost its way in the final act.
As for sequels, we are at a weird time in history. Due maybe in part just how prevalent media is and how easy (relatively) it is to create, we've been super-saturated in "like X but with Y" stories. We have dedicated websites mapping tropes. It's hard to come up with anything that hasn't been done a few million times. AI will probably accelerate that, and I can't say I know what comes next.
You will still have Amazon, Apple, Paramount, Disney, and NetMax spending billions each on content and streaming and Sony being the mercenary creating content for the highest bidder.
WB under Discovery was already becoming an also ran and more financial engineering than a real company.
Either way, this entertainment merger is going to get ugly. Consumers are absolutely going to get harmed either way with that clawback clause.