Netflix Backs Out of Warner Bros. Bidding, Paramount Set to Win
- I wasn’t bowled over by the idea of Netflix ownership but a merge of Paramount and Warner seems way, way worse. In a sane political situation this would raise huge antitrust concerns but… well, here we are I guess.
If it does go through I wonder if there’s a scenario where it still works out for Netflix: they could pick up assets at bargain prices when the merged studios inevitably sell and lay off everything they can.
by darth_avocado
7 subcomments
- Netflix is going to buy them both for the same price in about 5 years. Paramount is a highly leveraged company. They are not going to come out of this very expensive acquisition unscathed.
- Interesting perspective, here, from someone who has observed a tiny bit of unknown streaming history.
So, way back in the day, 2005, Turner Broadcast corp. launched this weird-ass thing, known as GameTap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameTap . It was a subscription-based service that offered on-demand retro videogames. While it started as a way to play MAME Pac-Man and Metal Slug legally from a legit service, it grew into a competitor in the online games market arena in a time when Steam was still nascent.
The whole thing was created by this amazing fellow named Blake Lewin. Blake was really sharp, and having built this on-demand, streaming emulation service, he even went on to add at-the-time-modern games. Now, this stuff literally just installed the game on your HD and let you play, so it wasn't quite Stadia or Luma, but it was absolutely ahead of its time, and it was really slick.
I was a journalist then, and while games journalists get pampered, Turner moving into games was on another level. They launched this thing at the Armani Store on Market St. in SF, and when you walked in, they asked you to pick some sun-glasses from the case to take with you when you left.
GameTap was great and even gathered a following, but from the moment it launched, I knew what it really was: Turner's scientific experiment to build the infrastructure to later allow it to stream its enormous library of content. Movies, cartooons, TV shows, etc.
I was having lunch with Blake, a few years into GameTap, and I asked him point blank how the video streaming prototypes were coming (pure guess, no evidence). He was baffled and wanted to know how I knew they were working on that. Said it had been going great!
But in the end, the service never launched, AFAIK. Maybe some remnant is still there somewhere, but it just shows, you can be years ahead in your planning and development, and still end up alone at the end dance. It's a shame. Turner has so many great things in their library, why is it not possible for me to just pay someone for access to all the old movies in the TCM vault!?
- Netflix win this by losing. Paramount has massively overpaid for Warner Brothers, and taken on a crippling amount of debt. It was existential for them, they had a failing studio and streaming service which they hope Warners IP and HBO can compensate for.
Let's not forget that Warner Brothers has been a bit of an albatross and never made money for anyone, that's why it's passed through so many different hands. Time, AoL Discovery to name a few.
Now Paramount are going to be sitting there with a mountain of debt, while Netflix and Disney are relatively debt free and very profitable and cash generative.
by mullingitover
5 subcomments
- This means Netflix still has all that cash they were planning to spend on WB, plus the 2.5B breakup fee from WB.
They could arguably just build a better WB from scratch with that kind of money.
by feb012025
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- Based on how the takeover of CBS has been going, it really does seem like waning support for Israel is the major motivation behind this huge consolidation. Pretty unbelievable to watch
In a matter of months: Paramount, CBS, TikTok, CNN, FreePress...
by master_crab
5 subcomments
- Well, Netflix did succeed at making the Ellisons pay a large fortune for something that costs a small fortune.
- I was looking forward to good UX accessing HBO through Netflix. Too bad, but looking forward to good UX accessing HBO, and paramount (?) some day down the line through Netflix when this converges.
by israrkhan
1 subcomments
- Paramount agreed to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD would owe Netflix if that deal didn’t go through.
- I think this will work out nicely for Netflix. It overleverages their competition, putting them in a worse spot, and I suspect traditional media is going to be far less of an demand from a pure screen-time perspective in the next 10 years. Generative content is just starting to get good enough with Seedance 2 - the cost of creation is about to plumet.
by softwaredoug
1 subcomments
- Maybe running up the price was part of the point.
by underlipton
1 subcomments
- Well, hope you enjoyed Pax Americana. We're heading into something that feels... about halfway between reich-y and soviet-y, at least on the propaganda front. Which is deeply ironic, of course.
by pentagrama
1 subcomments
- After the Paramount & Warner merger it will be good if they launch a Criterion Collection type of thing with the outstanding back catalog, going in the other direction of streaming, and producing and selling good quality Blu ray hardware. In my dreams of course.
by ZeroGravitas
1 subcomments
- No mention of Trump issuing insane threats against a Netflix board member and Netflix itself, in the story or the comments, because that is just normal now I guess.
- I’m so happy, because I collect movies and the idea of Netflix putting the entire WB catalog behind a subscription with no purchase option sounds awful to me.
by anduril22
2 subcomments
- Unfortunately Paramount will retain HBO, and auction off Discovery, which no one wants anyway.
by andsoitis
1 subcomments
- Paramount's financing package combines roughly $45–46 billion in equity with more than $57 billion in debt.
The deal values Warner Bros. Discovery at around $111 billion ($31 per share), and including WBD's existing debt, the total takeover comes to more than $110 billion. NBC News
It would be the largest leveraged buyout (LBO) in history, with $87 billion of total pro forma gross debt and an estimated gross leverage of approximately 7x 2026 EBITDA before synergies.
Seems like a poor decision driven by ego.
by indigodaddy
1 subcomments
- So NF is just not matching or exceeding an elevated Paramount offer... But could WBD still choose the already on the table NF deal at the end of the day? I guess with the sort of statement that Netflix made though, it's likely WBD would not and realizes NF is just done at this point. Or maybe it's some sort of double bluff by NF? Hard to really know for sure.
- Like many things, phone OS, desktop OS, CPUs, GPUs, ride sharing, credit card payments, video game consoles, we are heading towards a Disney/Paramount duopoly
by russianGuy83829
1 subcomments
- CNN; Midterms
- RIP Superman
- I tell ya, if you lean left politically it sure feels like we’re taking a lot of fucking L’s.
- I can't imagine Paramount doesn't ruin this.
by speedylight
0 subcomment
- Can this shit cake be undone by a federal judge? No way a merger like that doesn’t violate antitrust laws.
by burnt-resistor
0 subcomment
- Say "goodbye" to John Oliver, Erin Burnett, Abby Phillip, Anderson Cooper, and Fareed Zakaria to be replaced with Nick Fuentes and Tim Pool.
by lateforwork
1 subcomments
- This means CNN will now be controlled by Ellison. CNN will become another Fox news.
- So the right wing takeover of all American media continues
- Easiest $2.8 billion made in history?
- “Win”
by SilverElfin
0 subcomment
- From https://nypost.com/2026/02/26/media/paramount-skydance-victo...
> Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos failed Thursday to convince a skeptical Trump administration to approve his proposed takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery – and with that, his nearly done deal to buy WBD’s streaming service and studio went into a death spiral.
Is this about the price of the deal or the administration not approving mergers that they think don’t align with right wing ideology?
by volleyball
0 subcomment
- I wrote the following comment 4 months ago when Larry Ellison bought Tiktok (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45267643 ). Reposting it here, verbatim since it is part of the same story (imo) and everything in it has been confirmed in the last 4 months except for the last paragraph. I guess we will find out eventually :
So Larry Ellison just took over Paramount group which is now looking to bid for Warner Brothers and CNN. And now Ellison is going to take over TikTok.
Paramount(being run by Larry Ellison's son) is looking to install the pro-israel-propagandist who has variously masqueraded as a liberal, a conservative and anti-woke free-speech champion, Bari Weiss[1] as CBS's editor-in-chief or co-president[2]. It also bears mentioning that Ellison is a life-long zionist, friend of the IDF and close personal friend of Netanyahu to whom he even offered a post at Oracle.[3]
This very much looks like a hostile take-over of the American mind by a tech billionaire who just overtook Elon Musk to become the world's richest man. People should be talking about whether they want to go through this all over again.
[1] - https://theintercept.com/2018/03/08/the-nyts-bari-weiss-fals...
[2] - https://archive.is/20250916040811/https://www.nytimes.com/20...
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Larry_Ellison&old...
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