Gosh, this afternoon, I had the Netflix Senate hearing on in the background and this was quite the spectacle. Now you don’t have to watch all the viral clips that’ll surely come out of this clown show.
This was one of those hearings that’s ostensibly about antitrust but very quickly turns into cable-news theater, with senators auditioning for future primetime gigs.
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos found himself in the hot seat as lawmakers unloaded on the streamer for allegedly having the “wokest content in the world,” all while hammering its $83 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Hey, at least Sarandos swore under oath that WB movies would go theaters for 45 days.
The knives came out early. Texas Senator Ted Cruz went straight for the jugular, declaring Netflix a proudly left-wing company and warning Americans at home that a Netflix–WBD merger could morph into a full-blown propaganda behemoth.
Fellow Senator Eric Schmitt followed, hammering the same message. Netflix, he argued, is drowning in DEI initiatives, race-swapped characters, and programming that doesn’t “reflect what Americans want.”
All of this was delivered to a visibly stiff Ted Sarandos, who looked like he’d rather be anywhere else — perhaps trapped in a mid-budget Netflix rom-com he greenlit in 2018?
Sarandos did what any seasoned executive does in moments like this: he smiled, deflected, and spoke soothingly. Netflix has content for everyone, he insisted. Left, right, center. Parental controls! Choice! Algorithms!
The GOP senators’ messaging was clear: Netflix is a mass social-engineering machine.
Schmitt then dug up Netflix’s 2020 social media posts responding to George Floyd’s murder. Sarandos awkwardly attempted to deflect, insisting the company has no political agenda and gently suggesting that maybe, in hindsight, they wouldn’t post something like that today. The post, of course, is still up — and Netflix, it bears mentioning, was hardly alone. Every major studio did it that summer.
The truth is this hearing was mostly performative. The Senate can scream and complain all it wants, but it has no real power to derail the Netflix–Warner Bros. deal. That power sits with Trump’s DOJ — and hovering somewhere in the background is David Ellison’s Paramount, stirring chaos and hoping it somehow works in its favor.
Snyder has mentioned in the past how “Sucker Punch “never really got finished correctly,” and that it was “not really the correct cut.” The extra footage is actually already shot.