Paramount Skydance wins bidding war to buy Warner Bros.

By Dave Mason
The Center Square

Netflix, which offered an $83 billion bid for Warner Bros., announced Thursday it dropped out of the bidding war.

That clears the way for Paramount Skydance to buy Warner Bros., which would merge Paramount in Hollywood and Warner Bros. in Burbank for the first time. The iconic studios are about 8 miles from each other and have been around since the early 20th century. Warner Bros. is known for everything from Bugs Bunny and “Casablanca” to the Superman and Harry Potter movies, and Paramount has served as the home to the “Star Trek” and “Mission Impossible” franchises since the 1960s.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s board told Netflix earlier Thursday that Paramount Skydance’s $31-per-share offer was better than Netflix’s offer. At the time, Warner Bros. Discovery issued a statement saying it remained interested in its Warner Bros. assets being purchased by Netflix.

But Netflix, the world’s largest streaming service, responded it wouldn’t try to match Paramount’s bid.

“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” Netflix Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said in a statement. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”

Sarandos and Peters, whose company is headquartered in Los Gatos, Calif., said they believed Netflix would have been “strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the U.S. But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”

Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery agreed to a sale in December. Netflix at the time said it would buy Warner Bros. for $72 billion, which was the equity value. Netflix put the total enterprise value at $82.7 billion. But the deal soon became uncertain when Paramount Skydance launched a hostile $108 billion bid.

At the time, Wayne Winegarden, an economist and senior business fellow with Pasadena-based Pacific Research Institute, noted a Netflix deal could be better for Warner Bros. and Paramount Skydance employees. He said redundancies at Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, which both operate major TV and movie studios, would be more likely. He told The Center Square that raises the risks of layoffs.

What’s certain is the historical magnitude of Thursday’s developments.

Warner Bros. was originally started by four brothers – Jack, Harry, Albert and Sam – who officially incorporated their business in 1923. Warner Bros. was the first studio to release a movie with sound with “The Jazz Singer” (1927).

Paramount’s history dates back to 1912 when Adolph Zukor, W.W. Hodkinson and Jesse L. Lasky started the company.

The studio’s milestones included its then parent company, Gulf+Western, buying neighboring Desilu Studios from Lucille Ball in 1967 for $17 million and getting the “Star Trek” and “Mission Impossible” franchises as a result. No one at the time knew those would ultimately become financial gold mines for Paramount.

Skydance Media merged with Paramount Global on Aug. 27, 2025, in an $8 billion transaction. The enterprise value of the merger was $28 billion.