Hollywood on Life Support: How Tech Billionaires Are Killing Movies

From Skydance to AI films, tech billionaires are seizing Hollywood. Here’s what it means for the future of movies and media.

Hollywood is dying, but it isn’t because of nepo babies, or a lack of original ideas, or the decline in ticket sales, streaming and shifts in entertainment preferences, or any of the other risks that people like me might talk about in the press. It is dying because it is in the middle of a takeover by tech billionaires who are turning the art form of movies into just another content subscription machine.

The Ellison Empire

News broke the other day that tech billionaire heir David Ellison, founder of Skydance and new owner of Paramount, was also interested in buying Warner Brothers. David is the son of Larry Ellison, one of the richest men in the world. Larry founded Oracle and is currently worth an estimated $368 billion. Yes, you read that right. It is an obscene amount of money. So when David needed $6 billion to take over Paramount, daddy was there with his checkbook.

Now the same duo wants to buy Warner Brothers. That means two of the largest movie studios in the world could end up owned by one billionaire family, along with HBO, CBS, CNN, HLN, MTV, Comedy Central, TLC, TNT, HGTV, and dozens of other cable networks. A huge chunk of American media is going to be in the hands of one family. It is terrifying stuff.

Back in high school U.S. history, we all learned that deals like this used to be illegal. Obvious monopolies were broken up under antitrust laws to protect competition. But today, when billionaires bankroll both political campaigns and the candidates themselves, who is going to stop them? Teddy Roosevelt has been dead for a hundred years.

And it doesn’t end with movies and cable. The Ellison family also now owns a majority stake in TikTok. That means one billionaire family controls most of the major news media, movie studios, and one of the biggest social media platform in the country. Their grip on information is tightening, and no one in power is doing anything to stop it.

AI at the Gates

At the same time, tech companies like OpenAI are trying to force their own vision of Hollywood into existence. Sam Altman, CEO and founder of OpenAI, may “only” be worth $2.2 billion compared to the Ellisons, but he is just as dangerous to the future of movies.

His company is spending $30 million on an animated film called Critterz, which will be created almost entirely with AI tools. Even worse, it’s set to premiere at Cannes in 2026. Cannes has always been a champion of indie filmmaking and discovery of new talent. Giving this movie a platform goes against everything the festival is supposed to stand for.

This is not innovation. Innovation would be helping humans create faster. Rendering scenes faster, making animation easier, so the artists don’t have to draw the same character 1,000 times over and over.

And it isn’t cost-savings either. OpenAI can point to inflated Disney movie budgets that balloon to over $200 million, but that is a failure of the Disney system. One of the greatest animated films of this decade, Klaus, was made for $40 million. It can be done. Maybe AI could even get that down to $30 million with productivity enhancement. But spending $30 million to generate AI cartoons is not the way to approach this.

All this is is an attempt to replace human art with machine-made content and to cheapen creativity until it’s just code generating entertainment on demand.

The Bigger Picture

The consolidation of media and the rise of AI are terrifying. Even when humans create something, how authentic can it be when all of it is owned and distributed by the same four or five billionaire-controlled companies?

We’ve already seen it in mainstream news. A handful of conglomerates own almost every local station in the country, recycling the same scripts across hundreds of affiliates. Now that same control is extending to movies, streaming, and social platforms. CNN and CBS are under the same family’s control. Can we trust legacy media to invest in risky stories, challenge power, or push boundaries anymore? To me, the answer is no. Legacy media is dead. The traditional studio system is dead. Hollywood is on death’s door.

The Way Forward

Independent journalism and filmmaking are the only real future. The influence across traditional channels is so consolidated, so beyond even a basic monopoly, that there is no other option. The only way out is to follow and support independent voices.

That’s why indie film has surged in recent years, with distributors like A24 and NEON leading the way (though A24 is now leaning corporate too). It’s why journalists are leaving big traditional media outlets to write on Substack, launch podcasts, and build their own video channels.

We are in the middle of a dramatic shift in media that will shape everything we see. Movies, news, TV, social media - it is all compromised. The only way to fight back is to consume differently. Push against the system. Support independence. Hollywood may be dying, but storytelling doesn’t have to.