EXCLUSIVE: The International Documentary Association (IDA) is coming out with a forceful statement excoriating the planned merger of Netflix and Warner Bros, calling it a threat to nonfiction filmmakers.
“Netflix’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery would profoundly damage the future of documentary filmmaking,” writes the nonprofit org, which advocates for the doc community and supports the work of filmmakers through grants. “It represents the consolidation of two of the main distributors of documentaries: Netflix and HBO Max.”
The IDA statement continues, “This mega-deal immediately threatens documentarians’ creative opportunities and their freedom to tell stories that need to be told. It will also drastically reduce the range and overall quality of documentaries available to audiences worldwide. Netflix’s overwhelming market dominance will inevitably stifle competition, inhibit free expression, and limit viewer choice.”
For decades under the leadership of executive producer Sheila Nevins, WB division HBO Documentary Films became the premier outlet for prestige documentaries, releasing Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib, Baghdad ER, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts, and countless other films. Netflix has shown a robust appetite for documentaries and has earned Oscars for Icarus, The White Helmets, American Factory and more and fields strong Oscar contenders this year in The Perfect Neighbor and Apocalypse in the Tropics. But the possibility of the two companies becoming one alarms many in the doc field who are already coping with reduced demand for documentary content by streamers and other distributors.
The IDA joins the Writers Guild of America among institutions condemning the merger plan. The WGA wrote in a statement, “The world’s largest streaming company swallowing one of its biggest competitors is what antitrust laws were designed to prevent.” The Directors Guild of America, which includes many documentary filmmakers including Yance Ford, Marina Zenovich, Joe Berlinger, Alex Gibney, Geeta Gandbhir, Morgan Neville, Ondi Timoner, Lucy Walker, Chai Vasarhelyi, Sam Pollard and others, issued a statement expressing “significant concern” over the proposed union.
IDA
The IDA is set to announce its annual awards at a luncheon event in Los Angeles on Saturday, an event that brings together a great swath of the documentary industry. The Netflix-WB proposed merger and its potential impact on the doc community are sure to be a major topic of discussion at the awards.
Signaling its strong disapproval of the merger proposal, the IDA’s statement urged federal authorities to reject it. “We call on regulators to block this anticompetitive acquisition,” the IDA writes. “IDA joins with others in building collective action to oppose a deal that would permanently harm documentary filmmaking.”