Donald Trump in Morristown, NJ on Sept. 14, 2025. (Credit: Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images) <\/p>\n
The Trump administration is reportedly in favor of Paramount Skydance taking over Warner Bros. Discovery, despite the latter\u2019s board already rejecting three separate bids from the newly-formed media company.<\/p>\n
According to a report from The New York Post\u2019s On the Money<\/a>, an unnamed government official with direct knowledge said Paramount Skydance \u2014 helmed by CEO David Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder\/Trump supporter Larry Ellison \u2014 was in an advantageous position as WBD prepares to sell off its assets<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWho owns Warner Bros. Discovery is very important to the administration,\u201d the senior Trump admin official told the outlet. \u201cThe Warner board needs to think very seriously not just on the price competition but which player in the suitor pool has been successful getting a deal done.\u201d<\/p>\n Per the official, this \u201cpoints to the Ellisons.\u201d<\/p>\n White House representatives did not immediately respond to TheWrap\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Ellison has previously declined to comment on his company\u2019s bids for WBD<\/a>, however, he did note earlier this month that any dealmaking by Paramount would be approached \u201cthrough the lens of wanting to make more, not less.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe way we approach everything is first and foremost, what\u2019s good for the talent community, what\u2019s good for our shareholders and value creation and what\u2019s good for basically, storytelling at large,\u201d Ellison shared at Bloomberg\u2019s Screentime conference.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, The New York Times shared a letter written by Ellison to WBD\u2019s board, in which he stated that Paramount would be its \u201cbest partner.\u201d He added that the two companies would create a \u201cscaled Hollywood champion to the benefit of both our companies\u2019 shareholders, consumers and the entertainment industry at large.\u201d<\/p>\n Additionally, Ellison suggested any other would-be-bidders would face \u201csignificant (perhaps insurmountable) hurdles given their dominant market positions.\u201d<\/p>\n Ellison also offered WBD CEO\/President David Zaslav a co-CEO and co-chairman title to sweeten the bid.\u00a0Yet, Warner Bros. Discovery\u00a0rejected three separate takeover bids from Paramount<\/a> \u2014 including one that was nearly $24 per share and was 80% cash and 20% stock<\/p>\n Paramount Skydance may not be the only interested party either<\/a>, as Apple, Amazon, Comcast and Netflix have been floated as potential suitors for WBD. However, the senior government official expressed doubt over Comcast\u2019s Brian Roberts being able to \u201cexpand and buy CNN or whatever,\u201d calling it a \u201clow\u201d chance.<\/p>\n \u201cMaybe Brain Roberts comes up [with] grand detente with the president,\u201d they added, \u201cbut I don\u2019t think that will happen and that\u2019s the key.\u201d<\/p>\n Comcast and Amazon declined TheWrap\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n Though, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on Tuesday that the streamer would be \u201cchoosy\u201d with regard to M&A, making it clear they had no interest in acquiring linear networks.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s true that historically, we\u2019ve been more builders than buyers, and we think we have plenty of runway for growth without fundamentally changing that playbook. Nothing is a must-have for us to meet our goals that we have for the business,\u201d Sarandos said at the time. \u201cBut we focus on profitable growth and reinvesting in our business, both organically and through selective M&A. And when it comes to M&A opportunities, we look at them, and we look at all of them.\u201d<\/p>\n The post The Trump Administration Is in Favor of a Possible Paramount Skydance Takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery | Report<\/a> appeared first on TheWrap<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Donald Trump in Morristown, NJ on Sept. 14, 2025. (Credit: Kevin Dietsch\/Getty Images) The Trump administration is reportedly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,18027,1376,75,20522,27395,348,4432],"class_list":["post-235932","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-ellison","tag-donald-trump","tag-entertainment","tag-larry-ellison","tag-paramount-skydance","tag-tv","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a> <\/p>\n