{"id":72621,"date":"2025-10-10T22:13:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T22:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/72621\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T22:13:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T22:13:08","slug":"paramount-will-buy-warner-bros","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/72621\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Will Buy Warner Bros"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tNow heading toward the territory of when, not if, the most vexing obstacle for David Ellison<\/a> and Paramount<\/a>\u2018s purchase of Warner Bros<\/a> Discovery looks to be David Zaslav<\/a> \u2014 though probably not for long.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs of now, Zaslav is moving ahead with a somewhat-still-fuzzy plan unveiled this past summer to split WBD in half<\/a> by next spring to free the studio and streaming of several billion in debt and freefalling cable assets. At the same time, word on the Burbank streets is that Netflix or Amazon<\/a> could be looking to add some DC or GoT to their balance sheets.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDavid\u2019s a dealmaker, that\u2019s who he is,\u201d a streaming exec asserts, putting emphasis on enhanced shareholder value as Zaslav\u2019s endgame. \u201cHe\u2019s always gauging the possibilities and getting the best value, and that is what I think he is doing here. Whether it works or not, who can say right now?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tZaslav has reportedly engaged Goldman Sachs to gauge buyer interest and is valuing the company\u2019s studios and streaming units at more than $30 per share, a premium to the $22-$24 range floated by Ellison\u2019s camp. On the other side of town, Paramount Skydance CEO Ellison, who of course is the son of Oracle overlord Larry Ellison<\/a>, is in discussions with Apollo and other private-equity investors to join a potential $60 billion offer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tParamount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPatrick T. Fallon\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tBut what will the deep-pocketed Ellisons find if and when they take the reins? One thing, studio and Century City sources tell us, is that having received the regulatory green light from the Trump administration to close Skydance-Paramount, the well-connected Ellison regime anticipates it could seal a deal with the feds for the whole WBD enchilada in less than six months Stateside and within nine months in Europe and the UK \u2013 money music to shareholders\u2019 ears.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith that, the Skydance founder and gang may have reasons for concern, industry insiders and Wall Street watchers say, and a case to press for less \u2014 not the least being the timeline of the split. Zaslav recently set an April frame for the division of WBD into Warner Bros. and Discovery Global.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet, with regulatory hoops to jump though, a spring split sounds optimistic. It would also back into a June 2026 annual shareholder meeting that could be rough if the split isn\u2019t accomplished by then or pushed out.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think if you just look at David Zaslav\u2019s performance, he\u2019s pretty much failed shareholders every step of the way, right?\u201d an insider exclaims. \u201cServicing debt and bad decisions eroded billions and billions in market cap since Discovery basically took over Warner Bros. three years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSays one East Coast banker with deep Hollywood ties who is wary of the upside of a WBD split: \u201cMy perspective is, they break up the company and they figure out how to get some more equity into it. Even then, their performance will lead to a bad balance sheet over time again.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tYet, as Team Ellison circles, the quick-footed WBD CEO supposedly has attracted the interest of Amazon and Netflix as potential buyers \u2013 or at least that\u2019s the word on Warner Boulevard. However, off the lot, there\u2019s skepticism that either the House of Bezos or the Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters<\/a>-run streamer are truly interested.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAmazon got stung by buying MGM with little to show for it, and the FTC just made them pay up a $2.5 billion civil penalty,\u201d one studio (not Paramount) source says. \u201cBuying Warner Bros any time soon doesn\u2019t fit with their M.O.\u201d Amazon did not respond to Deadline\u2019s request for comment on a possible WBD purchase or interest.<\/p>\n

\n\tContacted by Deadline, Netflix shut down speculation by referring to co-CEO Peters\u2019 blunt remarks on the subject<\/a> earlier this week: \u201cWe come from a deep heritage of being builders rather than buyers,\u201d Peters said Wednesday at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles. \u201cOne should have a reasonable amount of skepticism around big media mergers. They don\u2019t have an amazing track record over time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tNetflix Co-CEO Greg Peters at the Bloomberg Screentime conference<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPatrick T. Fallon\/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tOn stage at the conference yesterday, Ellison declined to comment on a WBD buy. Paramount did not respond to a request for comment from Deadline on a possible purchase. Neither did WBD.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt seems that unless a presently unidentified proxy investor group or K-pop billionaire jumps in at the eleventh hour, the Melrose lot-based Ellison is the only one openly(ish) looking at buying Burbank\u2019s debt-laden WBD one way or another.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn the deal business, you\u2019ve got to see where the leverage is with the potential buyer and the potential seller \u2014 that always depends on the performance of the company in hand,\u201d a Wall Street source tells Deadline regarding the realities of what is ahead for Paramount and WBD.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen you have the kind of performance that Zaslav has had, he doesn\u2019t have a lot of options,\u201d the moneyman adds. \u201cNumber one: it\u2019s all boxed in. Number two: there are not a lot of companies that want to buy declining assets. Number three: shareholders, therefore, will be much more focused on certainty than on some fiction of fake buyers and corporate splits.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe separation would follow years of retooling after Discovery\u2019s rocky acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T for $43 billion. That was a much smaller company buying a much bigger one, resulting in about $50 billion in debt.\u00a0Shareholders like the split plan, but they may like a hefty cash buyout better.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDavid Zaslav<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRodin Eckenroth\/WireImage<\/p>\n

\n\tHow much a pre-split Warner Bros Discovery<\/a> is really worth is a question under debate among the town\u2019s openly cash-infused player Paramount and its almost certain acquisition target. While specifics are fluid, no surprise Par and CEO Ellison have a $60 billion, give or take, number in mind, while WBD and Zaslav have another. Let\u2019s just say, at least right now, that the latter is higher than the former.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cZas is playing the odds to get the best deal he can on his timeline with the biggest bidder in hand,\u201d an industry insier told Deadline, viewing the split as a Hail Mary, but one with a good chance of success.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven with a pre-pandemic box office level of $4 billion this year so far<\/a> for the Michael De Luca- and Pam Abdy-led movie studio, Zaslav and CFO Gunnar Widenfels have had to pare and pare to pay it down. In June, it stood at $35.6 billion.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn quarter after quarter, many missing targets, Zaslav and Weidenfels expressed surprise at just how bad things were at Warners once they got a good look under the hood; they said that hadn\u2019t really been possible until the deal formally closed in April 2022. Among the challenges they found: HBO worked in silos and was overstaffed, streaming was bleeding cash and there was superhero fatigue. WBD took a series of big write-downs for content, a huge one for cable, lost the NBA, created chaos at the viewer-bleeding CNN and flip-flopped over and over DTC branding of HBO and Max.<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, even with the fact that WBD no longer offers forward-looking guidance in earnings reports, the company outlook is better, in relative terms \u2013- and hoping for a further lift if one becomes two.<\/p>\n

\n\tLifted from Comcast\u2019s playbook, the idea of the split \u2013 aside from whether it ever actually happens \u2013 provided a jolt. The company is taking streaming international and is having agreat 2025 box office run with A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, Weapons, the Superman revival and the latest installments of\u00a0Final Destination\u00a0and\u00a0The Conjuring turned around the studio\u2019s fortunes and those of the just re-upped De Luca and Abdy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet, there\u2019s still that debt that hampers investment.<\/p>\n

\n\tA \u201crestructuring in June took about $3 billion off their debt, but they also have a $17 billion bridge loan, which is syndicated across Wall Street banks, which had not yet been refinanced,\u201d a well-placed finance chief told us of the math and risk. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the critical reasons why they can\u2019t spin off the company yet with the cable properties and studio. Two is, as part of their debt plan, they have to monetize 20% of one of the spin companies, which is studios and streaming, which they expect to have a high value. If they don\u2019t get the value when they spend, they\u2019ll still be over leveraged in the cable company. It all fraught with risk.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the market today, both Paramount and WBD are surfing the global and purchase waves. Paramount Skydance shares are down about 4% at $17 midafternoon ET; granted, the markets overall are tanking as Donald Trump<\/a> threatens new tariffs on China. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, WBD is shrugging off the downturn, up a hair to near $18, continuing to be buoyed by takeover talk.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s either showtime or a showdown in this tale of two Davids. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Now heading toward the territory of when, not if, the most vexing obstacle for David Ellison and Paramount\u2018s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":72622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[3468,4409,48360,12480,969,93,48361,61,60,11104,48362,3282,12867,282,2031,12481],"class_list":{"0":"post-72621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-amazon","9":"tag-analysis","10":"tag-david-ellison","11":"tag-david-zaslav","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-greg-peters","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-larry-ellison","18":"tag-neflix","19":"tag-paramount","20":"tag-prime-video","21":"tag-tv","22":"tag-warner-bros","23":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}