Paramount Launches Hostile Bid for Warner Bros
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The media landscape is abuzz as Paramount launches a surprise hostile bid for Warner Bros, throwing a wrench into Netflix's previously announced acquisition plans. Commenters are divided, with some rooting for the bid to fail, hoping it would lead to a more consumer-friendly model where content creation is separated from distribution. Others predict that the end result will be more content being paywalled and tiered, with some even nostalgic for the old days of owning content, now that multiple streaming services have siloed their offerings. As one commenter quipped, the likely outcome is that companies will just license their content to Netflix anyway, leaving consumers stuck with limited options.
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The second best outcome would be the cartoon villain Larry not getting what he wants.
I think a big copyright holders in a strange way actually don't want a repeat of cable. They want all content to be exclusive by default to their own streaming service.
One could imagine something similar, that sure you can put your own movie or TV show on your own website, but you must also sell it to companies who asks on reasonable terms. So Netflix can make a movie but couldn't say no to say Plex if they wanted to buy the rights to show it on Plex.tv.
Content has no such restriction. Are you really saying every piece of content anyone produces must be licensed? Who decides what is “reasonable”?
How is that law going to apply to Sony who is Japanese owned and CrunchyRoll?
Do we force PluralSight and Udacity to share their content? YouTube creators?
Sony does that now
That's a weird way to write "and for us to go back to owning copies of movies instead of just renting them."
Meet the new boss…
That's kind of a silly argument. "People are better off paying $100+/month for 4+ streaming services than $25/month for one that has everything."
If your argument were that you'd have to pay more than the current combined cost, it'd be a better argument against mergers. Arguing against something because it's a better deal is just strange.
Instead of a one-time Blu-Ray purchase for ~$25 for a movie to watch as many times as you'd like, it's an ongoing subscription for $25/month. If you only want to watch that one movie in two different calendar months, you've easily doubled your spend.
(Yes, it is still apples-to-oranges because you may watch more than one movie in a month, but the flipside is that the $25/month is a variable catalog fee. The movie you want to watch may be "vaulted" that second month you want to go watch it. With Blu-Ray you control your film catalog, with Netflix some finance team does.)
(Also, yes, easy to forget Blu-Ray in this debate because Blu-Ray is dying/dead, especially in physical retail with Target and Best Buy dropping its sections. You can also substitute a lot of the same arguments here with arguments for Movies Anywhere and/or iTunes Store.)
"Only we have sufficiently greased the current government to get this deal done"
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/11/25/trump-pushed-paramount-reviv...
https://deadline.com/2025/12/trump-paramount-60-minutes-davi...
> My real problem with the show, however, wasn’t the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air. THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE! Oh well, far worse things can happen.
Wasn't there a former Comcast employee as CEO of "X" initially?
The wild move for Ellison would be to bid for one of Trump’s crypto projects if the shareholder vote looks like it could fail.
[1] https://news.bloomberglaw.com/litigation/netflixs-sarandos-w...
Do you seriously need a Ukrainian to tell you how to do corruption in the year 2025 of our Lord? In US? In this economy?
Don't be cheap. You can get Roe v Wade back and Kavanaught's head on a pike if you bid high enough. Independent prosecutors will for sure find a pdf file one him somewhere.
If the vote looks close, Paramount would be expected to raise their bid to cover that cost.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000119312525... 8.3(a)
Either way, this entertainment merger is going to get ugly. Consumers are absolutely going to get harmed either way with that clawback clause.
It's not as bad as food scarcity, of course. But it can do some collateral damage.
It also has weird "subversive" dialogue about sacrifice being bad that doesn't really fit what's happening in the movie itself where sacrifice of two characters saves the day. Which is "subversive" in the sense that a movie with dialogue saying "this is a shitty movie plot" is subversive.
It also rips off the ending of Return of the Jedi by killing the main bad guy so is "subversive" in that it trolls whoever was stuck making episode 9 without a functional villain.
There is a real problem with too many sequels and adaptations though.
Maybe 3rd. Jedi is gorgeous but the script for everything past Jabba’s Palace is a mess. Doesn’t know what to do with all its characters, feels the need to have them all around anyway.
As for sequels, we are at a weird time in history. Due maybe in part just how prevalent media is and how easy (relatively) it is to create, we've been super-saturated in "like X but with Y" stories. We have dedicated websites mapping tropes. It's hard to come up with anything that hasn't been done a few million times. AI will probably accelerate that, and I can't say I know what comes next.
But also, yeah Episode 8 is the worst movie in the main film series. It makes Episode 2 look good.
WB under Discovery was already becoming an also ran and more financial engineering than a real company.
You don’t have to be “harmed”, just do not pay them your money. Problem solved. If the prospect of not being “entertained” fills you with anxiety and frustration, maybe that’s something to reflect on.
I'm sorry, you appear to have dropped your tinfoil hat. Here it is.
Food on the other hand, that's a real problem.
I mean the franchise didnt get anything top tier apart from Aliens labirynth and the vP 2 game from.. 2001?
Maybe they should just play that paperclip game.
Arguably they promote a chilling effect around acquisitions, which does help competition: "don't try to buy something unless you're prepared to deal with a possible fallout" should result in fewer attempts at consolidating dominant positions.
I'd almost be tempted to posit that such a clause should become mandatory for deals over a certain threshold (e.g. $1bn), with amounts determined according to certain parameters.
The kroger Albertsons deal was the other way around, the seller had to pay the buyer if the deal didn't go through.
No.
Paramount has nothing to do with these numbers, which both come from the Plan of Merger among Netflix, Warner and others [1].
Paramount's bid constitutes an Acquisition Proposal under § 6.2(c). It is a "proposal, offer or indication of interest" from Paramount, a party who is not "Buyer and its Affiliates," which "is structured to result in such Person or group of Persons (or their stockholders), directly or indirectly, acquiring beneficial ownership of 20% or more of the Company’s consolidated total assets."
Given it "is publicly proposed" after the date of the Plan of Merger and "prior to the Company Stockholder Meeting," it is a Company Qualifying Transaction (8.3(D)(x)). If the Paramount bid is accepted, a "Company Stockholder Meeting (including any adjournments or postponements thereof) shall have been held and been concluded and the Company Stockholder Approval shall not have been obtained upon a vote taken thereon" (8.1(b)(iii)).
If, then, Warner consummates the Company Qualifying Transaction or "enters into a definitive agreement providing for" it (8.3(a)(D)(z)(2), the Buyer or Company can terminate the Plan of Merger under 8.1(b)(iii). That, in turn, triggers the Company Termination Fee of $2.8bn, which is separate from the Regulatory Termination Fee of $5.8bn Netflix would have to pay Warner if other shit happened.
[1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1065280/000119312525...
This article is relating to Paramount's continued attempt to purchase WB despite Netflix announcing a deal with WB.
But not with things it does not. The numbers you quoted are not Paramount’s. (Though that is orthogonal to you being wrong on Warner owing Netflix a break-up fee if Paramount wins.)
Warner bros is being divided into the cable TV stations + discover channel stations and the movie studio and the backlog is separate.
Netflix wants the movie studio + tv back catalog
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/03/nx-s1-5630076/the-press-corps...
Just in case you think this is just another liberal hit piece, let me repeat that Fox News refused to sign the agreement.
https://lindelltv.com/lindelltv-press-corps/
Plus, they already own all of the online media. The important bits, anyway.
New Line has been part of Warner since they merged with TBS in the mid 90s.
The Hobbit for instance is a WB production, not Newline.
Apparently sometime shortly before they got the axe they paid Susanna Clarke a 7 figure sum to option Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I don't know a whole lot about options but 7 figures sounds like about 8-16x what people usually do especially for a 3 year old book by an unknown author. IIRC, that's more than Andy Weir got for The Martian. And more than Lev Grossman is worth today, and he got five seasons out of three books.
That option expired unused and BBC One and Cuba Pictures made it into a very good miniseries. Does feel a bit like a pattern of financial exuberence.
Also Clarke has a chronic illness, which is preventing her from trying for another book of that caliber. That mountain of cash is probably keeping her very comfortable.
The latter leaves behind “sports and news television brands around the world including CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report (B/R)” [3]. (Paramount is effectively bidding $5.9bn for these assets.)
Note that Zaslav, Warner’s CEO, is a prominent donor to Democrats [4], as is Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder [5]. (Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-CEO with Greg Peters, is mixed, leaning Dem [6].) Ellison is a staunch Trump ally. The partisan tinge will be difficult to ignore.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/media/paramount-makes-hostile-t...
[2] https://about.netflix.com/en/news/netflix-to-acquire-warner-...
[3] https://www.wbd.com/news/warner-bros-discovery-separate-two-...
[4] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=david+...
[5] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/03/us/politics/reed-hastings...
[6] https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/results?name=Ted+Sa...
Now you have one side that literally wants to sell a big part of US media to a foreign power while saying America First, in order to control who gets to speak. It’ll be a political environment with everyone that’s ever criticized the right wing government (or the Saudi Monarchy) being replaced.
Honestly would rather have the Warner Bros content over there than on Netflix.
Once they axed Prodigy and sold season 2 to Netflix (ironic, in retrospect), the writing was on the wall.
It frequently crashes after displaying ads, forcing me to re-open the app and watch ads again.
When watching ads does succeed (all 3 minutes of them…) and playback of my show begins, it shows the enormous pause button, the giant fade-to-black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, and covers up the subtitles, as though I had pressed ‘Play’.
And trying to pause requires you to press the pause button TWICE.
I tried to play a series, but instead of starting from the last-played episode + 1, it always plays the most recent episode since it’s a rewatch. This happened every time until I got caught up.
So I strongly disagree. If only to be able to watch all of this content without all of frustrating design flaws.
EDIT: They also end each episode with 2-3 minutes of ads. So you had to exit the show, then re-enter to not get hit with two ad breaks in a row.
My parents pay over $300/mo for an Xfinity bundle. It includes everything (phone, internet, and all streaming services on one bill)
The paramount+ app on the Xfinity box took TEN MINUTES to load a show. This is after crashing three times back to the logo.
Xfinity warns that it’s a 3P app and they aren’t responsible for it but it should be criminal to take the money and subject elderly people to this under spec hardware. Even live sports will pause and stutter.
I couldn't care less about the "casting" functionality but I use the (3rd gen?) version with a remote as a netflix/hbo/prime terminal. I know it's google, but it works much better than any random android box.
Problem is, what do I do when it dies? I heard they discontinued it and they put out a more expensive box out instead. Or did they, being google, cancel it?
And why are you not paying for ad free streaming?
EPL requiring both Peacock and a cable subscription to watch all of the games is extremely annoying. But I do it anyway.
All of those combined let me watch all the Arsenal games except FA and Carabao Cup.
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