Hollywood is in a brave new world.

Netflix’s plan to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business in an $82.7 billion deal would dramatically reshape the entertainment industry — and put a resounding exclamation point on Silicon Valley’s takeover of Tinseltown.

Twenty years ago, Netflix was a mail-order DVD rental service known for red envelopes. Warner Bros. was a crown jewel of American entertainment, famed for its studio lot water tower and revered for a cinematic heritage that stretched back to the early 1920s. Netflix was the scrappy interloper. Warner Bros. was a titan of the traditional media establishment.

Flash forward to the present: Netflix is the undisputed champion of entertainment, a streaming behemoth that reaches more than 300 million paid subscribers

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