Inside the Warner Brothers Sale: Netflix vs. Paramount and What’s Really at Stake
Netflix and Paramount are fighting to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. Here’s what each company wants and why this deal could reshape the media landscape.
If you were looking for an additional season of Succession, look no further than the current drama surrounding the Warner Brothers sale. As of my writing of this post, there is now an accepted bid for Warner Brothers by Netflix (which I wrote about here), and an attempt at a hostile takeover through a bid by Paramount as well. So let’s break down what is going on, what the best case scenario looks like, and how I think this will all play out. And most importantly, why each company is actually interested in Warner Brothers, because I think it goes deeper than simply growing their businesses through the acquisition.
How We Got Here
Warner Brothers is up for bid because someone was interested, originally Paramount. That is the whole story. If someone is interested in buying the company, the board has an obligation to consider the offer. Warner-Discovery CEO David Zaslav has put the company in a bad place with poor decision making and struggling financials. Even after a strong 2025 at the box office, they were still deep in debt.
Zaslav came in, slashed the company up, made a series of questionable decisions, laid people off, and will walk away a much richer man if this sale goes through. That is why the company is being sold. It is money. Capitalism. Pure and simple. This sale gets them out of that debt and allows shareholders and executives at Warner to walk away clean and, more importantly, rich from the increased stock price the sale will trigger.
What Warner Brothers Discovery Actually Is
It is important to understand what Warner Brothers Discovery actually consists of. It is a massive conglomerate. Warner Brothers is the larger studio entertainment side: movies, premium TV, HBO, DC, Harry Potter, all the big stuff.
The Discovery side of the business is built around news and reality TV. CNN, TBS, TLC, HGTV, all of that. CNN is the diamond there, especially with their global news networks included.
Why the Netflix Bid Is So Interesting
Netflix’s bid is especially noteworthy because they did not bid for the entire company. They were only interested in the Warner Brothers side. They want franchises. They want big ticket items. They want the sort of IP they have struggled to build themselves outside of a few hits like Stranger Things and Squid Game. Adding DC, Harry Potter, King Kong, Godzilla, and Looney Tunes would be a massive shift in power.
Netflix’s goal will be to use this library to add subscribers. Theatrical and physical media will be second. I do not think they will abandon theaters or physical media completely, especially given the Warner and Universal joint venture with Studio Distribution Services that runs through 2030. But theatrical windows will shrink, and physical media will likely become more of a background priority.
Paramount Enters the Chat
After Netflix announced their winning bid, Paramount stepped in. David Ellison, billionaire nepo baby and son of Larry Ellison, now owns Paramount after his recent acquisition. The Ellisons are loaded with cash and not shy about throwing money at what they want. Sort of like how your toddler throws a fit if they do not get their favorite toy. That is the Ellisons with major corporations.
So they threw their money at Warner Brothers and went straight to the shareholders with a larger cash offer for the entire Warner Discovery business. And this is where the story shifts.
What Paramount Actually Wants
The Ellison family wants to own information channels. It is a familiar pattern for the ultra rich. Rupert Murdoch, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos. They all want to own news networks, social media platforms, and publications. In the words of the wise John Mayer - “when they own the information, oh, they can bend it all they want”.
Larry Ellison already owns a stake in TikTok through the new deal shifting it to US investors. David Ellison already owns CBS and all of their networks through Paramount. While David may be genuinely interested in film and TV, he is also very interested, as are his father and their investors, in owning CNN.
It is also extremely important to realize who is backing the Paramount bid. This bid is backed by money from Paramount, Larry Ellison’s personal cash, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund, and Affinity Partners, which is also full of Saudi money and run by Jared Kushner, husband to Ivanka Trump and President Donald Trump’s son-in-law. David Ellison has even touted his relationship with Trump as a reason his bid should be approved over Netflix’s. Having Trump’s son-in-law involved only strengthens that angle. It is corrupt, but we also know that does not seem to matter anymore.
The Key Difference Between the Bids
The key difference is that Paramount bid for all of the assets. Netflix did not. And I think that matters.
Netflix wants the studio side. Paramount wants the Discovery side. Ellison wants to combine CNN with CBS News and further consolidate the news landscape, and the Trump connection and his obsession with “mainstream media” only helps that cause. With Kushner involved, it becomes even more concerning.
We are talking about a scenario where Saudi Arabia, a country with strict censorship, the billionaire Ellison family, and a close Trump family member would control CNN and CBS. That is a frightening recipe. It edges dangerously close to state run media.
The Not-So-Wild Conspiracy Theory
If I had to cook up a conspiracy theory, it is that all parties know exactly what they are doing.
Netflix wants Warner Brothers and knows regulators probably would not let them buy the entire company. That would merge the number one streaming service with the number three, give Netflix the world’s largest news network, and hand them the entire reality TV space. Netflix with Warner Brothers alone is enormous. With Discovery added, they become a certain monopoly by any definition of the word.
Paramount, on the other hand, knows Netflix will likely win the Warner Brothers side. So Paramount swoops in and makes an offer for the whole company. Shareholders can say “sell Warner Brothers to Netflix, get rich, then sell Discovery to Paramount and get richer.” And because these people all move in the same circles, it is very possible that this was the plan from the start.
If they make it look like competition, then splitting the company in two looks more appealing to regulators than allowing one side to take everything. And that is likely the point.
Best Case Scenarios
If the acquisition is approved, the best case scenario is this: Netflix takes Warner Brothers, leaves Discovery alone, and the Ellisons, Kushners, and Saudis go whine about losing. It is still a monopoly, but at least it is not state controlled media run by the President’s allies and foreign investors.
But the absolute best case scenario is that everything falls apart. Regulators block it. The government does its job, and Warner Brothers collects the $5.8 billion breakup fee from Netflix. That is enough to pay down debt, wake up the board, hopefully remove Zaslav, and get the business back on track while remaining their own entity.
What This All Means
This whole thing stinks of corporate collusion, government influence, political alliances, and billionaire opportunism. It affects everything in our lives, from the movies and TV shows we watch to the news we consume to the apps we use. It should be the number one concern for anyone living in America right now.
People are busy fighting online about trans kids playing high school sports and the cost of eggs while a small group of billionaires laughs all the way to the bank. This Warner Brothers deal is a defining moment in American history, not just for the film and TV world but for the economy and for democracy itself. Pay attention. The world could genuinely change with this deal.
And while I do not want a Netflix and Warner Brothers monopoly, it might be the least dangerous option if a deal has to go through.
I never thought I'd see the shocking amount of flagrant corruption, collusion, and criminal behavior by a president and his administration. I believed in the checks and balances set up in our Constitutional Republic to prevent this very thing. Credit the ultra-rich right-wingers for laying the foundation for this takeover of our government back in the 70s. They got Reagan elected who started us down this road. The tipping point came with Newt Gingrich's ascension to Speaker of the House. Republicans openly conspired to hobble the government to hurt as many average people as they could while pushing the right-wing billionaire agenda under the cloak of their culture war propaganda. We saw the rise of right-wing extremists on AM Radio talk shows and with Fox News flooding the zone with their agenda. This was fertile ground for an amoral opportunist like Trump to take advantage of the manufactured anger, frustration, and bigotry in a large segment of our country. He has used the Authoritarian Playbook to near perfection with the eager assistance of feckless, spineless Congressional Republicans, many of whom are in the House thanks to GOP Gerrymandering. Add this to the right-wing takeover of the Supreme Court, which rubberstamps Trump's actions, and you no longer have a functional Democracy. So it is no surprise that the Trump Crime Family is actively engaged in aiding the takeover of our media. We will see right-wing billionaires and hostile foreign entities act to consolidate our media so they can control the message. Naturally, it will be in service to the Dear Leader's fascist agenda.
Want to say thank you for delivering this information to your followers. We are seeing unprecedented corruption from the current Admin and large companies. Article is very informative and well stated.