During the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood, five major studios competed for actors, directors, scripts and audiences. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Radio-Keith-Orpheum, Paramount, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox all had clout.

Still, some in Hollywood worried about the consolidation of power, which explains why Charlie Chaplin, D. W. Griffith, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks founded United Artists, which became one of the “Little Three” studios along with Universal and Columbia Pictures.

The era was notorious for controlling and often shady behavior but no one can say there was not ample competition.

To say that the business of commissioning, producing and exhibiting motion pictures has changed is to understate. The old boundaries between what is film and what is television have effectively vanished, content being just content now, and we suspect that many people reading this editorial no longer regularly go to a movie theater, preferring instead to stream films at home, using personally owned equipment that would have been the envy not just of the movie palaces of old but of the suburban multiplexes of more recent vintage.

This change of preference, hastened by an entity called Netflix that once shipped DVDs through the mail, has had a detrimental effect on big American cities, once well stocked with movie palaces, leading to crowded sidewalks and restaurants.

All that said, movies and TV shows still get made and the best of them still find an audience and in the business of Hollywood, consumer preferences cannot be ignored.

Which brings us to the extraordinary machinations of this week. Friday, Netflix announced it had agreed to buy Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business for $72 billion (in a cash-and-stock deal); the assumption was that the company would first carve out its cable unit, appeasing regulators and sticking the likes of CNN, TNT and Discovery in a separate public company, but meaning that Netflix, a $400 billion company, would control HBO Max, the premiere outlet for prestige TV, as well as the venerable Warner Bros. itself with its Harry Potter and DC Comics franchises, among others.

Hollywood howled not least because some of its most powerful players never have trusted Netflix, which they see as a tech company. They view Amazon, which has bought up most of the rest of what we still prefer to think of as Hollywood, in much the same terms.

Then, on Monday, a wrench was thrown in the works in the form of a hostile bid from Paramount Skydance, which is controlled by David Ellison, for all of Warner Bros. Discovery, with an all-cash offer reportedly worth almost $78 billion. The figures being bandied about, which are higher than the GDP of numerous world nations, give a sense of what is at stake here and also how much big money has infiltrated the entertainment business.

Which deal is better is for Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders to decide, or rather should be. And, for the record, we’re not fans of a yet-bigger Netflix; rarely has Netflix equaled the producing artistry of HBO, which it would now control. You did not see “The Wire,” “Succession” and “The Sopranos” on Netflix, despite its monster budgets.

But one Donald J. Trump also has his stubby fingers in this pie. He’s already been quoted saying that he has concerns about the Netflix/Warner merger (“could be a problem”) and that he intends to be “personally involved’ in the negotiations.

Trump is, of course, famously friendly with centibillionaire (a quaint term, no?) Larry Ellison, father of David, and close observers are worrying that the fix might well be in, especially since Paramount’s bid is being backed by Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a former White House adviser who is popping up in the discourse all over the place. David Ellison even said on CNBC, “We’ve had great conversations with the president about this, but I don’t want to speak for him.”

We imagine he has done plenty of speaking already.

We’ve come here to say two things. One is that the movie business, like all businesses, needs healthy competition, especially since so much of its talent operates on a freelance basis and thus needs numerous outlets, lest compensation be reduced and, frankly, really good movie ideas not get made due to the whim of some suit. Audiences need choices, too, and Netflix already is a very dominant presence.

But Trump’s friendship with the Ellisons, and the presence of his son-in-law in this fight, should have no bearing on whatever regulatory decisions are made. Indeed, we call on Trump to recuse himself, which is about as likely to happen as Americans charging out of their family rooms and basements en masse and returning to the movie theaters that figured so pleasurably in most of their youths.

But that doesn’t stop us roaring like the MGM lion.

Stay off the screen on this one, Mr. President.

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