A television writer in Los Angeles clicks through five streaming apps on a Tuesday night before giving up and rewatching an old sitcom. It’s a brief, nearly unmemorable moment. However, it speaks to the state of Hollywood in 2026.
Viewers eschewed cable bundles for the promise of freedom for over ten years. Choose what you wish to subscribe to. Don’t do what you don’t want. The goal of the “Great Unbundling” was to give customers more power. Rather, it shattered the sector. That disarray is now crumbling under its own weight.
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Leading Streamer | Netflix |
| Acquisition Target | Warner Bros. Discovery |
| Key Asset | HBO Max |
| Competing Giants | Disney, Amazon |
| Estimated Deal Size | ~$83 billion |
| Reference | https://www.netflix.com |
Netflix’s approximately $83 billion deal to purchase Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and streaming properties, including HBO Max, may have been the turning point in this change. If authorized, the transaction would bring together one of Hollywood’s largest collections, including Harry Potter, DC superheroes, and prestige dramas, with the biggest streaming service in the world. One gets the impression that this goes beyond simple consolidation. It has been redrawn.
The unbundling period, which lasted from about 2010 until 2024, was a land grab. Platforms would stop at nothing to acquire new users. Original content cost billions of dollars. The metric was growth. It took longer to become profitable. At first, consumers rejoiced in the abundance. But many turned to weariness.
It became a monthly habit to binge and cancel in order to manage four or five subscriptions. Streaming services started to resemble revolving doors because to the aggressive churn caused by the “subscribe, binge, cancel” cycle. The sector might have confused sustainability with choice.
Streaming earnings increased more quickly than linear TV income. In the past, cable charged millions of people who hardly ever viewed particular channels in order to fund content. That buffer was absent from streaming. Each program had to directly defend itself to subscribers who paid.
You may still see soundstages humming, golf carts darting between buildings, and security gates shining in the California sun as you pass the Warner Bros. complex in Burbank. Executives, however, have been facing awkward spreadsheets on the inside. Budgets for production skyrocketed during the streaming wars. Returns are less certain.
The proposed purchase of Warner Bros. by Netflix. Scale over sprawl is the pivot signaled by discovery. Netflix would have control over both the “pipe” and the “water”—production studios and distribution—should the agreement go through. One business building may house almost 20% of all streaming viewing in the United States. Previous coalitions would be dwarfed by such concentration.
Investors appear to think that fewer, bigger players are necessary for profitability. More subtly, the rebundling has already started. Disney combined Hulu with Disney+. Content was incorporated into Prime memberships by Amazon. Telecom agreements have restored “free” add-ons for some apps. The cable bundle changed shape rather than vanished.
The irony is difficult to miss. The tech titans are finally absorbing tech-native insurgents after they challenged them for years. Once an outsider shipping DVDs, Netflix has the potential to emerge as the leading digital-era vertically integrated Hollywood company.
Of course, there is skepticism. Regulators will closely examine the transaction. Antitrust concerns arise when a renowned studio joins forces with a distribution giant. Smaller producers fear a decline in their negotiating leverage. There might be fewer options for independent studios.
Whether consolidation will stifle the industry’s diversity or stabilize it is still up in the air. Producers discuss the “Big Three” future—Netflix, Disney, and Amazon controlling worldwide streaming—in coffee cafes along Sunset Boulevard. The others drift into specialty territory, merge, or specialize.
Concentration is favored by economics. The expense of content is increasing. The final intractable subscription driver, live sports rights, is getting more costly. Workflows for content discovery and even production are being infiltrated by AI, which promises efficiency but also disturbs creative labor. It seems like Hollywood’s former oligopoly is making a comeback in digital form as we watch this play out.
The distribution scale makes a difference. A Netflix-WBD merger would not just rule the US market. It would have worldwide reach. Once supplemental, international subscribers are now essential. If a show is approved in Los Angeles, it must be well received in Seoul and São Paulo.
HBO used to represent carefully manicured status. Netflix represented algorithmic scale and volume. Combining those ideas might result in either an identity crisis or a powerhouse. Corporate integration may complicate creative individuality while calming operational turbulence.
The instant experience can make things easier for viewers. fewer applications. bigger libraries. A strangely familiar convenience that has been rebundled. However, there is a change in power below that convenience.
Disruption was the driving force behind the Great Unbundling. Survival is the driving force behind the Great Rebundling. A billboard outside a Westwood theater promotes a blockbuster that is only available on streaming services. The studio’s logo is noticeable. The larger version of the platform logo. Those two might be the same in 2026.
And the form of entertainment is subtly solidifying once more, this time into scale rather than chaos, somewhere between Hollywood soundstages and Silicon Valley algorithms.
