How Streaming’s New Monopoly Killed Hollywood Cinema

Hollywood’s running out of ideas and running out of luck now that Big Tech streamers have built a monopoly that’s far worse than the old studio bosses ever dreamed of, and no one’s stopping the flood of mediocrity that’s killing theaters. But there’s a reason that most movies end up failing in theaters nowadays. The industry is now facing a new normal where most of its entertainment offerings are coming up short.

It wasn’t always this way, as film director Joseph Kahn noted on X recently.

Paradigm shifts don’t happen overnight. You know what came in the decades after the Golden Age and the Paramount Decrees? French New Wave. Auteurism. Lawrence of Arabia. 70s film brats. Kubrick. Scorsese. Spielberg. Lynch. The Godfather. The greatest film of all time – TORQUE.

— Joseph Kahn (@JosephKahn) November 29, 2025

Back in the late 1920s through World War II, studios like MGM, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and RKO controlled film production worldwide. People called that time Hollywood’s Golden Age. Those major studios owned the theaters for most of that period. The Supreme Court changed everything in 1948 with its decision in United States v. Paramount Pictures. The Paramount Decrees made the Big Five studios sell their theater chains. The rulings also stopped block booking. Studios lost guaranteed screens for their films. Theater owners could reject bad movies. Quality became key to survival. Studios competed on real merit.

Home video and television kept the same rules. Studios produced discs but did not own stores like Target, Best Buy, or Blockbuster. Networks created shows that depended on Nielsen ratings and ad money. Risk stayed real with clear measures. Streaming changed that.

The advent of streaming platforms has crushed Hollywood’s creativity and box office by recreating those old studio monopolies, but this time there are no checks on quality. 

After a federal judge ended the Paramount Decrees in 2020 because they were outdated in a world run by Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and others, streaming companies rebuilt vertical integration even stronger than before. Companies now control production and their own apps. These platforms hide viewership data because subscriptions pay the bills, not tickets or ads. No one checks their numbers. Accountability vanished.  And the platforms take their monthly fees no matter how bad the quality of content gets. 

Every subscriber dollar goes to the same pot regardless of views, and now the streamers are forgoing lucrative offers for independent films. They favor in-house projects that build their own libraries and get top promotion. This is forcing indies to either sell cheap or get nothing because platforms will push their self-made content first. Producers are having to beg for low fees or face shutdowns. Studios greenlight endless projects with sure distribution, and only buy outside work for scraps – if at all.

This kind of power goes well beyond what the 1948 court simagined. Tech giants now own creation and delivery without any market pushback. Whereas independent films and creators once thrived after the old studio model split, we are now back to another era where only a few firms control it all. And those who don’t survive have their debt and content bought up by the next biggest firm. And all the while, studios grab familiar brands to stay afloat, and Hollywood repeats safe formulas while we watch the industry shrink.

Streaming is only speeding up that decline instead of building it up. COVID closed approximately 8,000 screens worldwide, half of the cineplexes the US. Financing required DEI then infected most all the studios and they began forcing inclusion and diversity on audiences while lecturing them about their intolerance. Then the 2023 strikes lasted nearly six months and starved content and pushed the studios towards more reliance on AI, to the point that even AI actors are on the horizon.

Nowadays, the only big hits that aren’t franchise IPs have to be built as huge budget diversions, like amusement-park procedurals structured like video games. Movies have to be big events, with spectacle capable of luring adults away from their 60-inch 4K home setups, only to have to pay for overpriced popcorn, and sticky seats with no pause button. While existing IPs get reworked into the same tired formulas, original dramas tackling real human struggles have fled to TV, because they no longer draw cinema crowds.

The music industry faces the same issue. The labels lost their grip, yet new songs are either built by AI or just copy old hits. Modern creators imitate more than invent. Real talent stays rare.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. But don’t kid yourself: Hollywood’s not coming back until someone breaks Big Tech’s stranglehold and forces these hacks to compete for your eyeballs again, not your monthly dues.  Streamers can cram their libraries with all the old classics you could ever want. But when it comes to new stuff? Forget it. Quality doesn’t matter—only “new” does. Every once in a while, they stumble into something good. But mostly, it’s about keeping you glued to the screen long enough to binge the next thing and keep paying those monthly dues.

***