{"id":145949,"date":"2025-11-21T06:18:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T06:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/145949\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T06:18:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T06:18:09","slug":"warner-bros-discovery-bids-submitted-by-paramount-comcast-netflix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/145949\/","title":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Discovery Bids Submitted by Paramount, Comcast, Netflix"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery<\/a> is about to dive into the nitty-gritty work of deciding whether to sell itself \u2014 in whole or in part.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe media conglomerate, home to Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max, CNN, TBS, HGTV and more, is now evaluating multiple acquisition offers. First-round bids, which were due Thursday (Nov. 20), were expected to be submitted by Paramount Skydance, Comcast and Netflix<\/a>. A source with knowledge of the situation said that those three entities did submit nonbinding, preliminary offers by the noon ET deadline. It\u2019s unclear if there were other expressions of interest. <\/p>\n

\n\tMultiple sources noted that the bidding process required participants to sign nondisclosure agreements, as is commonplace. Paramount Skydance<\/a>, Netflix<\/a> and Comcast<\/a> declined to comment as did Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it had received in-bound M&A interest from \u201cmultiple parties\u201d and kicked off a process to review offers<\/a>. WBD\u2019s board wants to review the initial offers before Thanksgiving, with the goal of deciding the way forward before the end of 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Ellison, fresh off closing the deal forming Paramount Skydance in August, is known to have submitted bids for WBD<\/a>\u00a0in its entirety; in October, the Warner Bros. Discovery board rejected his $23.50\/share offer<\/a> of 80% cash and 20% stock (which also proposed making David Zaslav co-chairman and co-CEO of the merged company). Paramount Skydance\u2019s bid this week, fully backed by the Ellison family (i.e., wealthy tech mogul Larry Ellison) along with RedBird Capital, was expected to be roughly in line with Ellison\u2019s previous $23.50\/share offer, the Wall Street Journal reported<\/a> on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

\n\tWBD said it will consider proposals<\/a>\u00a0in which the Warner Bros. business (HBO Max and studios) is sold separately from Discovery Global, the TV-centric company.\u00a0That aligns with Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s already-underway plan to split into two companies by April 2026, with Zaslav set to become CEO of Warner Bros. and current CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels to become chief exec of Discovery Global.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix\u00a0and\u00a0Comcast, which is splitting NBCUniversal in two with the spin-off of the Versant cable-focused company by year-end,\u00a0have been looking to acquire the Warner Bros. streaming and studio operations \u2014 they aren\u2019t interested in WBD\u2019s cable TV business.<\/p>\n

\n\tEllison has made the case that Paramount is the best suitor for WBD, and that combining the companies would produce a\u00a0scaled-up media and entertainment powerhouse<\/a> across streaming, TV and film. The Ellison camp also sees a Paramount takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery as encountering the least regulatory obstacles; it\u2019s worth noting that the Ellisons are friendly with President Donald Trump, who reportedly favors a Paramount-WBD merger and has expressed open hostility toward Comcast chief Brian Roberts over MSNBC\u2019s coverage of Trump.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix is looking to get its hands on Warner Bros.\u2019s extensive production capabilities and deep film and TV library. But the prospect of the No. 1 premium streamer also acquiring HBO Max has triggered antitrust alarms<\/a> among some politicos. Meanwhile, sources said Netflix has reassured WBD that it would honor the latter\u2019s theatrical distribution deals to keep Warner Bros. films in cinemas<\/a> in the event its bid is successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Discovery is about to dive into the nitty-gritty work of deciding whether to sell itself \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[5000,156,1094,111,139,69,68338,437,3204],"class_list":{"0":"post-145949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-comcast","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-netflix","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-paramount-skydance","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}