Warner Brothers

That creaking sound you hear creaking is Jack Warner, the founder of Warner Bros. studio, turning in his grave. Last week, it was announced that Netflix had purchased one of Hollywood’s most respected studios for a staggering, indeed insane $83 billion – which makes Disney’s purchase of Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 seem like the bargain of the century. The sale would create a monopoly the likes of which has never been seen before in the film industry. Most people assumed that such a bid – in this increasingly beleaguered business – is very, very bad news. They might be correct. That’s why it’s even more staggering that Paramount have today, with impeccable timing, announced their own hostile takeover bid for Warner, offering an even more outlandish $108.

In a largely patchy summer for blockbusters – the excellent 28 Years Later aside – Joseph Kosinki’s F1 stands out for two distinct reasons. The film has arrived at an interesting time for the sport, which is finding increased popularity in the United States among demographic groups that previously may have ignored it – such as younger women – due to the success of the Netflix show Drive to Survive, accordingly name-checked in the movie. That show gives a behind-the-scenes look at Formula One racing and is now onto its seventh series.

When The Flash opens at cinemas this week, its production company DC Studios and distributor Warner Brothers will no doubt be hoping that attention is diverted away from its troubled, pronoun-wielding star Ezra Miller and towards its multiverse qualities. To the uninitiated, this sounds simply as if the studio has rounded up every actor who ever played Batman (save Christian Bale, who has wisely moved onto other things), chucked a Supergirl into the mix and even produced a truly bizarre Nicolas Cage cameo as Superman. Even Christopher Reeve appears, from beyond the grave. But to its now-desperate makers, mindful of the massive financial success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the film has to succeed.

If Warner Brothers’ expensive superhero film The Flash is released next summer — and does not follow the fate of this year’s Batgirl, which has been summarily canceled — it will be fascinating to watch what the publicity circus does with its leading man. Or, to be more exact, leading human, as its star Ezra Miller has dismissed conventional ideas of being pigeonholed as anything conventional. They declared in 2018 that, “Queer just means no, I don't do that. I don't identify as a man. I don't identify as a woman. I barely identify as a human.” It is perhaps not a long path from these statements to Miller’s recent announcement that they are finally attempting to put their wildly chaotic life in some sort of order.