Peter Preston 

Beware a deal that dims Searchlight

Peter Preston: The media merger of the century might – alas – push creative Fox Searchlight into the sticky clutches of Warner Bros
  
  

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire
Searchlight success: Dev Patel and Freida Pinto in Oscar winner Slumdog Millionaire. Photograph: AP Photograph: AP

Score a counter-intuitive tremor of anxiety as 21st Century Fox and Time Warner continue their stately progress towards a bigger takeover price. Will Fox Searchlight, Rupert Murdoch's more adventurous, creative production-cum-distribution company, survive the sticky embrace of Warner Bros's big studios and smaller ambitions? On the one hand, Slumdog Millionaire, The Full Monty, Juno, Calvary, Sideways, 12 Years a Slave; on the other, Harry Potters, Hobbits and recent clunkers such as Transcendence and Jersey Boys. Without Fox Searchlight's 100-plus movies, the last two decades would have been a much drabber place (demonstrating that the expanding empire of Rupert can still contrive good deeds as well as bad). But if he pays too much and consolidates too little? SOS (as in Save Our Searchlight).

 

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