Sinners won so hard it killed Warner Bros...?

If you're ever wondering whether something is radical or challenges power, watch how quickly power mobilises to ensure it never gets made again.

Such is the case with Sinners, which (perhaps only in part, with Gunn's Superman last year) has clearly scared the international power structure so much that the sly-handed, disrespectful Brits set up two of the film's stars to be humiliated on live TV, with hours of broadcast delay to prevent it. Now, the Ellisons will own Warner Bros, a studio that didn't need to be sold, being sold to a studio, Paramount, that can't even afford to buy it on paper.

The Ellison's consolidation tour – ironically, only made possible by the striking down of the Paramount Decree – has been devastating to the concept of Media Independence and diversity. Of course, there's never really been any independence or true competition, but the scarce scraps of it we did have led to one of the most outstanding films of the last century, Sinners, being made, and many other auteurs in the past few years being enabled to make big budget independent fare, such as Digger, Innaritu's return to the screen that comes out later this year.

This is what we are about to risk losing. Losing the archive is bad enough, but the direction Warner Bros has been heading in has been one of the most iconic runs in modern cinema. Clearly, because woke wasn't making them broke, the current power structure saw them as a primary target.

There are so many reasons the Ellisons want control over Warner Bros – but I can't help but think that two of the biggest swings at power last year (Sinners & One Battle After Another) were, perhaps, a warning sign to what people are now calling "the Epstein class", that some artists were managing to get a bit more brazen on 4000 screens a week.

It is widely considered a fact that Ted Serandos of Netflix went to Washington, and, after hearing they would not support him in this deal, announced they were stepping back. This is not a surprise – the current American Administration is on a mission to make as much money and amass as much influence as possible. The Ellisons are aligned with the administration.

Many are saying "the solution is independent cinema", but that will only provide us one "Scale" of ongoing art, and will quickly sideline diverse stories into niche/arthouse spaces where they can be ignored by the mainstream. It will also deplete the number of diverse voices making blockbuster films, and deprive auteurs such as Coogler of their budgets.

So, not good. Our current hope is that California stops the merger, but it doesn't look like it will work. I wish I could provide hopium, dear reader. In the meantime, as we wait for the final death knell of Warner Bros, I suggest you stock up on DVDs and BluRays etc etc. and be very loud about how much this sucks. If you're a filmmaker, you better have something in Pre and a lil something in Post.

We're in for a long "winter".