Netflix says it is not buying Lionsgate.
That is the first thing worth saying plainly.
After Semafor floated Netflix as a possible suitor, Lionsgate shares jumped, the industry started whispering, and then Netflix denied it was interested. No filed offer. No signed deal. No official pursuit. Just the market doing what the market does when a 20,000-plus title library and franchises like John Wick and The Hunger Games suddenly look gettable.
So no, this may not be a Netflix story.
But it is absolutely a consolidation story.
Alex LeMay is a filmmaker, journalist, and most recently a showrunner/supervising producer at Endemol/Shine NA. PitchCraft publishes from the intersection of storytelling, sales strategy, and the work of building things that matter. It’s like business school for filmmakers. Subscribe if this works for you. Share with a filmmaker you love.
Because even if Netflix is not the buyer, the logic behind the rumor does not go away. Lionsgate is exactly the kind of target a larger company would want right now: a recognizable library, active franchise intellectual property, a film and television engine, and a business the market can imagine folding into something bigger without the political nightmare that came with the Warner sweepstakes.
Given all this, it’s pretty likely someone will buy Lionsgate (or insert other large independent film production company here, think A24).
Probably not this week. Maybe not Netflix or even the obvious buyer. But a company like Lionsgate does not sit in the middle of a consolidating industry without becoming part of the math.
So the real question is: What happens to the film and television business when companies like Lionsgate keep getting treated as acquisition targets?
Because at this point, these mergers can’t be treated like isolated weather. It is a pattern. Scale chasing more scale. Libraries being treated like defensive fortresses. Audience attention fragmenting while capital tries to reassemble certainty by stacking more rights, more intellectual property, more old titles, and more control under fewer roofs.
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And if you are trying to build a life as a filmmaker or producer with one foot in the system and one foot outside it, that pattern creates a real emotional and professional bind.
Because people still need to work.
That matters.
I am not interested in sneering at anyone who still pitches into the machine. Rent is real. Crews need jobs. Producers need buyers. Talent needs financing. Not everyone can simply declare independence, light a cigar, and “build outside the system” by Tuesday.
Most people are just trying to keep making work inside a system that keeps changing the rules.
That deserves some grace.
But it would also be dishonest to keep pretending the old pitch path is still a stable professional ladder when the ladder keeps getting bought, merged, debt-loaded, and stripped for parts.
The history here is not subtle: media companies keep using consolidation to chase leverage, libraries, and distribution muscle, then turn around and ask labor and creators to absorb the uncertainty (when their very jobs are uncertain, more on that later).
That is the bind now.
We still pitch to Hollywood because Hollywood still controls money, marketing, distribution, and the illusion of scale.
We also need to stop pretending Hollywood is healthy.
Those two things can be true at the same time.
If Netflix is not buying Lionsgate, the immediate story changes. The larger story does not.
The larger story is that Lionsgate still looks like the kind of company that could be swallowed. A buyer gets deeper catalog, recognizable franchises, and more internal supply. Lionsgate gets an exit. Wall Street gets a narrative. The rest of the industry gets smaller.
That is the part worth paying attention to.
The important story would show up later: fewer meaningful buyers, more centralized bargaining power, more pressure on projects to arrive pre-legible, and even more reason for creators to show up with proof instead of vibes.
That is already where the business has been drifting.
More consolidation would not invent that logic.
It would intensify it.
And now there is another signal sitting right next to it.
Google is reportedly putting $75 million into A24 as part of an artificial intelligence research partnership.
That is not the same thing as buying a studio outright, but it points in the same general direction: the companies with the deepest pockets want to get closer to the places where culture, talent, intellectual property, and new production workflows are being made.
And A24 matters because it is one of the few modern studio brands that actually means something to audiences. People associate it with taste, risk, authorship, weirdness, credibility, and cultural heat. That is rare. So when one of the largest technology companies in the world wants a seat close to that machinery, we should pay attention.
On one side, Lionsgate looks buyable because of its library and franchises.
On the other, A24 attracts tech money because of its brand, taste, and proximity to the future of filmmaking tools.
Those are different stories, but they rhyme.
Both suggest that the next version of Hollywood will not simply be studios competing with studios. It will be studios, streamers, technology companies, artificial intelligence companies, private equity, and distribution platforms all trying to own pieces of the same shrinking map.
And the danger is not just that the industry gets smaller.
It is that the idea of who is needed to make art gets smaller too.
Because artificial intelligence is almost always sold as empowerment: more tools, more speed, more possibility. Some of that may be true. But inside a business already obsessed with cutting costs and reducing risk, faster and cheaper often becomes fewer people in the room. Fewer editors. Fewer visual effects and concept artists. Fewer early-career people learning by being close to the work.
That does not mean every deal is bad or every new tool is evil.
But creators should pay attention.
Because when the money gets bigger, the rooms often get smaller. And creativity was never supposed to scale like software.
And this is where I think the moment asks for a little more clarity from all of us.
If the buyer universe keeps shrinking, then being “pitchable” in the old sense may not be enough anymore. Not worthless. Just insufficient.
If fewer companies control more libraries, more rights, and more audience access, then showing up with a screenplay and a prayer becomes a harder path than it used to be. The project may need to arrive with some signal attached to it: audience response, format clarity, proof-of-concept, creator traction, a clearer sense of why this thing lives now and not in a drawer for three years waiting for a more favorable quarter.
That is not because filmmakers lack talent.
It is because the market is asking for more evidence before it takes a risk.
The more concentrated the buying side becomes, the less room there is for beautiful ambiguity on the selling side.
That is not a moral judgment.
It is just the shape of the current market.
That may sound bleak, but I do not think it has to be.
I think it clarifies the job.
So here is the shift I would argue for.
We stop framing the problem as: Should I still pitch to Hollywood?
Instead, we frame it as: What kind of project can enter a market like this with enough strength, clarity, and leverage to survive the process?
That is a more useful question.
Because it accepts reality without surrendering to it.
It lets you say: yes, I may still need the machine. Yes, I may still need to sell into the machine. Yes, I may still need the scale, spend, and infrastructure that only a few large players can offer.
But I do not have to walk in empty.
I do not have to build a project that, like the myth I always talk about, can only live if one overworked executive says yes at exactly the right moment.
I do not have to hand over all my leverage at the door and call that professionalism.
If the market keeps consolidating, then the practical response for filmmakers and producers is leverage.
Build work that has a path before the meeting and proof before the ask.
Build optionality, so “no” from a major buyer is a setback, not a death certificate.
That is not anti-Hollywood.
That is how you pitch to Hollywood now without letting Hollywood become your only oxygen source.
And maybe that is the harder truth underneath this latest Lionsgate rumor.
The issue is not whether Netflix buys Lionsgate, but rather that Lionsgate still looks buyable
The issue is that the buyer side keeps consolidating and that gate keeps getting narrower.
And for anyone still trying to make a life in this business, that can feel exhausting. You can do everything right. You can have the script, the deck, the relationships, the timing, the taste, the work ethic — and still feel like the room got smaller before you even walked into it.
That is the part we should be honest about.
But I do not think honesty has to lead to despair.
I think it can lead to a better kind of preparation.
Not the old preparation, where you polish the pitch and pray someone saves you.
A different preparation.
The kind where the project has some life in it before the meeting. The kind where there is proof, even if it is small. The kind where there is an audience signal, a piece of footage, a community, a reason this story needs to exist now.
No, that does not mean stop pitching.
It just means we should stop walking in like the world stayed still.
Alex LeMay is a filmmaker, journalist, and founder of Shadowfile.Press by The Shadow Gang, an AI-powered investigation engine for journalists, documentarians, podcasters, and researchers. Creative Force, my feature doc about the resistence in Ukraine, was most recently streamed at Cannes International Film Week through PitchCraft publishes at the intersection of storytelling, strategy, and building things that matter.
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