Netflix’s $82.7 billion rags-to-riches story: How the a DVD-by-mail company swallowed Hollywood

It’s a story so good  it could have been a screenplay. In 2000, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph sat down across from John Antioco, then CEO of video rental giant Blockbuster, and pitched him on acquiring their still unprofitable DVD-by-mail startup, Netflix, which at the time had around 300,000 subscribers. But when they told him their price—$50 million and the chance to develop and run Blockbuster’s online rental business—Antioco balked. It was a famously shortsighted business decision: By 2010, Blockbuster had filed for bankruptcy, and Netflix had stormed Hollywood with its entertainment streaming service

Now Netflix—a behemoth that has moved far beyond streaming others’ films and shows, with an estimated $18 billion content spend for 2025—is writing the sequel, following the same underdog-towinner trope. It announced in early December an $82.7 billion deal to become the new owner of the storied Warner Bros. film and television studios, plus cable crown jewel HBO and streamer HBO Max. The deal comes some 15 years after an executive who previously oversaw those very assets dismissed the notion of Netflix being a threat to Hollywood’s power structures: Jeff Bewkes, then CEO of Warner Bros. parent Time Warner, described that scenario i...