What Exactly Is Going On With The Netflix-Warner Bros-Paramount Deal?
This is a Succession episode come to life, literally
Warner Bros. is between the devil and the deep blue sea.
WB has had a chaotic decade, and that is putting it politely. The studio that gave the world Casablanca, The Dark Knight, the Harry Potter franchise and a staggering share of Hollywood’s cultural memory has spent the last ten years getting passed around like a hot potato no one really knows how to cool down. The latest addition in line to the potato game? Netflix. Or, if the offer is too good for WB’s shareholders to refuse, then Paramount Studios.
Wait, how did we get here?
Remember how, in the 2010s, there would be memes about how Marvel movies were so much better than their DC counterpart? That is kind of how the problems started. Warner Bros. (then TimeWarner) had a huge franchise in their hands, but they didn’t quite know what to do with it. Unless you movie was directed by Christopher Nolan, your movie was almost always a guaranteed failure. A very expensive one at that.
And so TimeWarner was acquired by telecommunications company AT&T (short for American Telephone and Telegraph Company) in 2018. AT&T planned to create a huge streaming company to challenge the likes of Netflix. Warner Bros had HBO with series like Game of Thrones and Succession under their belt. So along with a few smaller media companies, AT&T created WarnerMedia, the parent to HBO Max.
As luck would have it, however, it was not really a successful bid. Add to that the Covid-19 pandemic, where studios around the world took a huge financial hit, and the world's third largest telecommunications company was so riddled with debt that it wanted out of the media business altogether.
The ball then passed on to Discovery in 2022, which inherited mountains of debt on a deal built on the hope that they could somehow drag Warner Bros back to stability. After all, HBO’s streaming service, with its shows like Game of Thrones, was something of a creative jewel. Discovery was able to improve on the franchises: 2025 saw a massive resurgence for WB. Matt Reeves’ Batman universe just had its spinoff, The Penguin, win an Emmy. People are still not over the wonder that was James Gunn’s Superman.
But all this was not enough. Discovery is still drowning in debt and has decided it’s time to punt the ball again, this time to Netflix, which brings us to the present-day scenario.
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Available in select theatres only…
After weeks of bidding wars with Paramount and Comcast, Netflix announced that it is buying Warner Bros. for $72 billion (that’s almost thirty short of a hundred-billion-dollar deal). WB’s board of directors have agreed to it, although it could be up to two years before the shareholders approve of the decision and the paperwork is done.
Now, Netflix, unlike Warner Bros., is a streaming platform. Netflix’s whole brand is streaming-first, theatre-second-if-we-feel-like-it, which terrifies an industry still recovering from COVID-era empty halls. The deal has faced an onslaught of anti-trust scrutiny by fans and cinema goers all over the world, because the merger would also mean that Netflix, currently the top streaming service in the world, would acquire one of its biggest rivals to form an entertainment monopoly.
Netflix, on the other hand, sent a letter to all its subscribers that the deal will only mean that they will have access to more shows and films, and that "Both streaming services will continue to operate separately". Warner Bros., it claims, would keep releasing the studio's films in cinemas. How much freedom they would have to do so, though, is the question.
“...my favorite passage from Shakespeare? Take the money”
This is where the deal takes a Succession-esque turn. Paramount, of course, is not happy is Netflix walking away with WB. On Monday, after losing the bid to Netflix, they announced that they will bypass the decision of WB’s board and go straight to the shareholders with a bigger offer to buy Warner Bros. shares. The money they are offering? 108 billion USD. If they end up gaining more than fifty percent of WB’s shares, the deal with Netflix will stand cancelled, whether Netflix and WB likes it or not. This, in business, is what everyone calls a hostile takeover.
You might think that this is a better way out than losing good movies to streaming services. That is true, till you see who is backing Paramount. Paramount studios was bought by Skydance some time back. The owner of Skydance? Billionaire Oracle founder and close friend to US President Donald Trump, Larry Ellison.
Additionally, Paramount’s bid has received financial support from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and, according to multiple reports, Jared Kushner. That’s Trump’s son in law, by the way. With Trump being this closely involved with Paramount, people are understandably asking if there’s a motive beyond business. Is there a play for more influence? State-adjacent media control? A consolidation of entertainment power under a politically connected family?
The devil and the deep blue sea, we said? Talk about the monopoly and the super powerful political family.