Washington The Justice Department on Monday approved the acquisition of one century-old film studio by another, declaring that combining the two largest remaining entertainment companies into one larger entity would 'dramatically increase competition' in a market that now contains one fewer competitor than it did on Friday.
Officials explained the merger fosters rivalry by ensuring there is no longer anyone left to be a rival to. The combined company will now compete vigorously against itself, widely considered the fairest possible matchup.
Consumers, the Department stressed, retain abundant choice. They may watch the conglomerate's films in a theater, on a phone, on a television, or projected onto a wall, and in each case will be choosing, freely and from the heart, the same company.
Antitrust attorneys praised the decision for its mathematical elegance, observing that subtraction has at last been recognized as a form of addition.
A spokesman for the merged entity, which has not yet decided what to call itself and may simply go by 'the studio,' said audiences would notice no difference, and framed this as the achievement. "You will pay what you paid, watch what you watched, and resent whom you resented," he said. "We have removed the confusion of alternatives."
Whichever streaming platform a household selects, analysts noted, it will end up paying the same conglomerate: all roads now lead to one cashier. A market with exactly one participant can never lose market share, a stability the Department called 'the healthiest a marketplace can be.'
Satyr Satire sought comment from a competing studio and was redirected, by law, to the same one.