In the waning months of 2025, Cinema 21 manager Erik McClanahan was mercifully reminded of another year—2019.
That was the final glowing moment of theatrical exhibition before the pandemic emptied theaters, the 2023 strikes choked the movie slate, and studios shortened theatrical windows to force their streaming agendas.
At last, McClanahan recalls thinking last year, things were looking up. Original titles like One Battle After Another, Sinners and Weapons had done “great business” for the Northwest Portland institution.
Then, in November, it became clear that Warner Bros.—the studio behind all those critical and commercial 2025 hits—would be sold.
McClanahan’s new feeling?
“Why can’t we have nice things?”
The modern movie industry is synonymous with tumult, but the prospect of an iconic Hollywood studio being swallowed by another presented its own fresh hell.
Initially, Netflix was the presumptive favorite to acquire Warners after the streaming giant’s initial purchase bid was accepted in December. But in early March, after several attempts at a hostile takeover, Paramount outbid Netflix and now appears poised to finalize the acquisition.
“Forlorn” is how Clinton Street Theater co-owner Aaron Colter describes his first reaction to Warners going up for sale. “Global oligopoly isn’t good for anyone in any market.”
Granted, there are so many dimensions to Paramount buying Warners that it would take a 20-expert panel to explore all the possible future permutations. What will happen to Batman, CNN and HBO? Will Paramount CEO David Ellison honor his promise to make 15 theatrical movies a year under the WB banner? Will California sue to block the merger? Will the Ellison family’s closeness to the Trump administration grease the regulatory wheels?
But for Portland independent theaters, there’s an important, less-discussed aspect to this sale: Warners’ near-bottomless film archive of more than 6,000 titles.
In repertory screening-hungry Portland, access to that trove is important. Colter estimates that his theater sources 10% to 20% of its repertory titles from Warners, and McClanahan confirms that Warners is currently one of the most enthusiastic studios to return titles from its vault to the big screen.
The city’s zest for rep titles is more than just anecdotal.
Bret Berg—theatrical sales director at the American Genre Film Archive—confirms that Portland represents the third-biggest U.S. market for theatrical rentals from AGFA, behind only New York and Los Angeles.
The Austin-based nonprofit routinely loans movies from its catalog to Portland indie theaters, including the Hollywood, Cinemagic, Cinema 21, Clinton Street, the Academy, the Tomorrow and 5th Avenue.
“I am constantly amazed at the creativity of local programmers in Portland,” Berg says, “looking through our catalog, identifying what excites them, and figuring out how to creatively market their ideas to their audience.”
But that creativity depends on options, and Warners has the deepest Hollywood studio library. If Paramount restricts access to Warners’ library, Colter estimates it could be disastrous for Portland theaters.
“During consolidation, too many films can be relegated to obscurity because companies want to cut costs and focus solely on a limited number of titles that bring in the most immediate money,” Colter says.
On the sunnier side, organizations like AGFA could be bastions against the constantly changing corporate landscape.
The archive is 2,000 films deep (plus 6,000 more 35 mm prints, per AGFA’s website) and procures most of its licensing from physical media distributors, not major studios. While light on blockbuster titles, the archive is full of beloved cult films by directors such as Werner Herzog, Dario Argento and Takahashi Miike.
“I do think our library becomes a little bit more attractive to the repertory theaters [in light of the sale],” Berg says. “We’ve just had a record-breaking January and February.”
Still, McClanahan remains more concerned about Warners’ future first-run output, as he estimates new movies are 90% of Cinema 21’s business.
When it comes to mergers, McClanahan has seen this movie before. Disney completed its absorption of Fox in 2019, and the two lasting industrial results were (1) fewer jobs in Hollywood and (2) fewer movies overall. The Cinema 21 manager suspects the same will be true if Warner Bros. becomes part of Paramount.
“We need more movies, not less, for this industry to sustain itself,” McClanahan says.
There’s also the question of how political interests could impact what movies might be made.
“Paramount seems beyond problematic at this time since they’re so cozy with Trump,” McClanahan says. “Something tells me they wouldn’t greenlight Sinners or One Battle After Another.”
Maybe, though, there’s some contextual comfort in the fact that fresh Hollywood hells are often just sequels.
Though you didn’t see any Oscar montages devoted to these forces last Sunday, political machinations, corporate vagueries and artless monopolies riddle the history of American movies. Warners itself has been sold six times since its inception.
In McClanahan’s view, that history signals to exhibitors and cinephiles never to get comfortable, but there’s little gained by fretting.
Warner Bros. is a 103-year-old movie studio; Cinema 21 is a 101-year-old theater; Clinton Street is 112.
“This is a marathon,” McClanahan says, “not a sprint.”