{"id":498969,"date":"2026-03-02T08:17:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T08:17:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/498969\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T08:17:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T08:17:13","slug":"there-was-no-good-outcome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/498969\/","title":{"rendered":"‘There Was No Good Outcome’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In the hours after Netflix (NASDAQ:<\/a>NFLX<\/a>) walked away from its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:<\/a>WBD<\/a>) on Thursday, clearing the path for Paramount Skydance\u2019s (NASDAQ:<\/a>PSKY<\/a>) $111 billion takeover of one of Hollywood\u2019s most storied studios, a prominent film critic was already calling it a disaster in the making.<\/p>\n

On the latest episode of \u201cThe Big Picture\u201d podcast, host Sean Fennessey offered a blunt verdict: \u201cThere was no good outcome in this sale. The history of Hollywood studio mergers and acquisitions is littered with creative roadkill.\u201d<\/p>\n

Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced Thursday they would not raise their offer to match Paramount\u2019s revised $31-per-share bid after the WBD board declared it \u201csuperior.\u201d The streaming giant said the deal was \u201calways a \u2018nice to have\u2019 at the right price, not a \u2018must have\u2019 at any price.\u201d Paramount\u2019s winning bid values Warner Bros. Discovery at approximately $111 billion \u2014 and hands David Ellison control of the studio behind \u201cSuccession,\u201d \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d \u201cThe Sopranos,\u201d and CNN.<\/p>\n

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Fennessey\u2019s central argument is that Warner Bros. never needed to be sold at all.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a great business with enough viable properties to sustain another century of film, TV, and any other forms of media,\u201d he said. \u201cBut the people who bought the company in 2022 bought it to sell it\u201d \u2014 a damning framing of the deal as a corporate flip of a crown jewel rather than a strategic vision for its future.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a reference to the 2022 merger that created Warner Bros. Discovery, when AT&T spun off its WarnerMedia assets and combined them with Discovery Inc. under CEO David Zaslav.<\/p>\n

He invoked the Disney-Fox merger of 2019 as a cautionary tale. \u201cLook at the Fox Disney deal from 7 years ago and ask yourself if that helps movies in any way. This one could be significantly worse.\u201d These deals, he argued, \u201ctend to favor corporate synergies over creative risk taking\u201d and \u201cshrink the number of people who get to work in the movie business.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The political dimension of the deal is where Fennessey\u2019s alarm is loudest. Ellison will now oversee not just the studios behind \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d \u201cBarbie\u201d and \u201cDune,\u201d but CNN, HBO, and CBS \u2014 a network already under scrutiny for what the podcast described as a \u201cpivot rightward and in the direction of President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019ll now have CNN and HBO under that same watchful eye,\u201d Fennessey warned.<\/p>\n

That concern extends well beyond podcast commentary. Ellison attended Trump\u2019s State of the Union this week as a guest of Senator Lindsey Graham, while Sarandos was reportedly at the White House on the very day Netflix dropped out.<\/p>\n

On whether Ellison\u2019s Skydance is equipped to steward a legacy stretching from \u201cCasablanca\u201d to \u201cHarry Potter,\u201d Fennessey was candid: \u201cSkydance\u2019s track record as a tastemaker is iffy at best.\u201d The company produced \u201cTop Gun: Maverick\u201d and \u201cTrue Grit\u201d \u2014 but also a string of forgettable streaming action films. \u201cSometimes you\u2019re a genius,\u201d he said, \u201csometimes your taste leads you to the bottom of the barrel.\u201d<\/p>\n

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At this price, he added, over-leverage is a real danger: \u201cit\u2019s not hard to see a world in which Paramount is overleveraged by debt\u2026 with any number of unfortunate and ugly outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fennessey argued Netflix may have made the shrewdest move of all. \u201cNetflix may have just played the most successful game of chicken in the history of modern media. It lost the battle for Warner Brothers, but almost certainly won the long term fight for primacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Netflix shares surged more than 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday and were up over 7% at $90.64 before the bell on Friday.<\/p>\n

The deal still faces regulatory review, with a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for March 4.<\/p>\n

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Image via Shutterstock<\/p>\n

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This article Hollywood’s Worst Deal Ever? Critic Sounds Alarm On Paramount’s $111 Billion Warner Bros. Win: ‘There Was No Good Outcome’<\/a> originally appeared on Benzinga.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the hours after Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) walked away from its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) on Thursday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[28,18205,227855,1506,227856,217,4208,227854,77953,5251],"class_list":{"0":"post-498969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-david-ellison","10":"tag-fennessey","11":"tag-hollywood","12":"tag-hollywood-studio","13":"tag-netflix","14":"tag-paramount","15":"tag-sean-fennessey","16":"tag-ted-sarandos","17":"tag-warner-bros"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}