Paramount Skydance Launches Hostile Bid For WBD After Netflix Wins Bidding War (cnbc.com) 66
Paramount Skydance is launching a hostile bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery after it lost out to Netflix in a months-long bidding war for the legacy assets, the company said Monday. CNBC: Paramount will go straight to WBD shareholders with an all-cash, $30-per-share offer. That's the same bid WBD rejected last week, according to people familiar with the bid who asked not to be named because the details were private. The offer is backstopped with equity financing from the Ellison family and the private-equity firm RedBird Capital and $54 billion of debt commitments from Bank of America, Citi and Apollo Global Management.
"We're really here to finish what we started," Ellison told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Monday. "We put the company in play." On Friday, Netflix announced a deal to acquire WBD's studio and streaming assets for $72 billion. David Ellison-run Paramount had been bidding for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery, including those assets and the company's TV networks like CNN and TNT Sports.
"We're really here to finish what we started," Ellison told CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" Monday. "We put the company in play." On Friday, Netflix announced a deal to acquire WBD's studio and streaming assets for $72 billion. David Ellison-run Paramount had been bidding for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery, including those assets and the company's TV networks like CNN and TNT Sports.
Re:epic battle (Score:4, Insightful)
If you think Hollywood is suddenly "woke" then you haven't been paying attention to movies for a good 70 years.
Re: epic battle (Score:2)
"Let's see one of you rich, pasty white motherfuckers try to sneak into Mexico or Russia with no papers"
Spoken like someone who has never left his hometown. You really think you can't get into Mexico without a passport? No sneaking necessary. You just walk across in plain view.
Re: epic battle (Score:2)
Indeed, the one and only time I went to Mexico. I parked my car at the mall on the US side. Walked to revolving bar doors going one way into Mexico and that was it.
Coming back into the US side took much longer and one of the US soldiers yelled at me for taking a picture of a building. That was before the memos saying that public photography of public federal buildings is always ok.
The fact that San Francisco ended up looking worse than Tijuana is sad.
Re:epic battle (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think Hollywood is suddenly "woke" then you haven't been paying attention to movies for a good 70 years.
No, you dumbass, the whole idea here is that with Ellison taking over Skydance / Paramount, the idea is that there is some balance being injected into the business.
After all, as you point out, Hollywood has been a woke dumpster fire since the beginning.
There needs to be a balance. For every Leftist billionaire funding sedition and division, there must be a Rightist billionaire pushing unity and deporting the abject filth being imported into this country since the mid 60's but hugely accellerated under Biden's teunure of 2020-2024.
Deport them all.
Let's see one of you rich, pasty white motherfuckers try to sneak into Mexico or Russia with no papers. Let's see how well those two countries treat you.
Don't like it? Get the fuck out. Leave. Go live where you're happy, wherever that may be.. but not here.
Right, let's cut through the noise. There is a significant political dimension to this story that's been buried under a mountain of speculation. The Trump administration is openly favoring David Ellison's bid for WBD, with officials stating that the owner of WBD is highly important to the administration. This political interest is underscored by a recent, controversial event. Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a Kamala Harris interview, and their merger was approved shortly afterward. Now, three senators are investigating whether Ellison cut a side deal with Trump, raising legitimate corruption concerns. Ellison's own political history paints a picture of strategic opportunism. He is a self-described social liberal who gave nearly a million dollars to Biden's campaign. Yet, he began appearing at UFC fights with Trump precisely when he needed regulatory approval. Furthermore, under his leadership, CBS dissolved its race and culture unit, laid off women disproportionately, and fired the Gaza correspondent. This isn't ideological balance; it's strategic positioning for business advantage. The real story here is that the Trump administration appears to be using antitrust power to reward friendly billionaires and penalize others. As the Writers Guild noted, we are handing the keys to the media kingdom to entities primarily motivated by maximizing short-term returns. This is a genuine scandal about the antitrust process being compromised by political favouritism and billionaires acquiring media influence through political connections. David Ellison isn't correcting decades of Hollywood ideology. He is simply demonstrating that paying the right people and making the right promises gets regulatory approval.
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Larry Ellison Is a ‘Shadow President’ in Donald Trump’s America [wired.com]
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Re:epic battle (Score:4, Insightful)
If leftists policies do not work how can there be leftist billionaires? Or do you mean right wing billionaires who virtue signal to gain the money of the leftists?
Netflix is the epicenter of anti-woke (Score:4, Interesting)
No, you dumbass, the whole idea here is that with Ellison taking over Skydance / Paramount, the idea is that there is some balance being injected into the business.
Half of Netflix's standup specials are anti-woke marquee comedians, very few of which are actually funny. Take Andrew Schultz...shitty edgelord whose comedy persona is throwing the R word around and shitting on people different than him. Offensive comedy is like hot sauce...a little bit of offensiveness can be spicy and edgy....Schultz's material is just boring...it's like sriracha on saltines...gives the burn, but no good flavor. But hey, he interviewed Trump for some reason...not sure why Trump wanted anything to do with that boring moron.
However, their most famous is Dave Chapelle...TBH, I don't find his anti-trans stuff all that offensive. He's just made himself a figurehead for the anti-trans movement...at the expense of actual comedy. He USED to be really funny. Now his specials are just kinda long and tedious with few laughs.
Beyond him, there are tons of others: Hingecliff, Rife, etc....comedians who just aren't that funny, but hey, they say the R-word, right? They make fun of feminists, right? They're not afraid to make fun of the disabled, just like you did in grade school!!! They hate or shit on the same people. you hate!!!! Then there's Joe Rogan...producing a bunch of these. Famous?...yes...funny?...eh, certainly not to me. I don't get the sense people with more conservative leanings are laughing either.
Fortunately, this anti-woke comedy scene seems to be imploding. Comedy is supposed to make you laugh...not clap. You can inject politics into standup, but...if there are no laughs, it's just a Fox News commentary. For awhile it scratched an itch...a need for those who found the world going crazy and lacking common sense to be seen...who were frustrated with all this "woke-ness" that's not really a thing beyond a few corners of Twitter of conservative commentary. I live in the belly of the beast. I am among the liberals they're talking about. The "woke" movement was just loud randos online, not an organized movement. It wasn't a political movement. There are "woke" individuals, but they're mostly people, completely outside of power, with some undiagnosed mental disorder....just like the conservative prepper crazies stocking up on MREs and ammunition and building bunkers. However, the number and influence of "woke" individuals was greatly exaggerated.
Turns out if your comedy doesn't make people laugh, it just doesn't have a huge audience....hence why no one cares about the jackasses Netflix has been promoting so heavily. However, Netflix is anything but woke. Like all entertainment companies, they're focused on money, not politics. They'd never risk losing money for their beliefs, whatever they are.
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Fortunately, this anti-woke comedy scene seems to be imploding.
Released earlier this year but if anyone has yet to see it this video is really fantastic at breaking down how this came about and why it feels so weird and unfunny, even to the audience they're trying to reach.
How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult [youtube.com]
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However, their most famous is Dave Chapelle...TBH, I don't find his anti-trans stuff all that offensive. He's just made himself a figurehead for the anti-trans movement...at the expense of actual comedy. He USED to be really funny. Now his specials are just kinda long and tedious with few laughs.
I get a sense he's not all-in on the TERF business, that it is as much about getting an easy laugh and defending his own ego ("how could I ever be wrong about something!") than it is about a true and honest belief. And his recent stuff really comes across as out of touch with reality (which he is, as a very rich celebrity he has lost track of the core that used to drive much of his comedy) and his behavior in his local community (by opposing affordable housing initiatives and threatening city council member
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This red-billionaire-bad blue-billionaire-good bootlocking is on-point for AC.
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Re:epic battle (Score:5, Funny)
Seriously, I bailed when Captain Kirk started making out with green skinned women. Who wants to see that?
Don't knock it until you've tried it.
Most old Westerns are pro-native (Score:1)
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Anti-woke will ALWAYS shoot itself in the foot. There's a very basic issue at play, if you are a part of a group that feels they are being discriminated against, there will be protests, and a push against that discrimination. Race, ethnic group, sex, gender, or whatever, that push back against discrimination will ALWAYS happen. And, the more that discrimination goes on, the bigger the push back will be.
Now, this is where it shoots the anti-woke people in the foot, when the push back happens, it doesn'
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Netflix vs Paramount is Woke vs Anti-Woke? How? Both outlets are right wing. Netflix is basically violent action movies and right wing comedy, Paramount was just bought by members of Larry Ellison's family.
You guys just label everything "woke" - by which you just mean "non-fascist" - without actually even a second of thought or research, don't you?
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Let me get the popcorn... (Score:2, Funny)
Not that we, the movie-enjoying public, will benefit from either side winning. But it may provide interesting entertainment in the meantime.
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A bidding war over legacy media is like Titanic passengers fighting over who gets the last deck chair. Whoever wins will probably lose in the end. They will pay too much, have no money left to actually create new content, raise subscription fees to pay for the debt, lose subscribers as a result. In 5 years or less, what's left will be up for sale again.
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...and watch the deep pockets of Netflix duke it out against the politically-favored Paramount+Ellisons.
Well... maybe less favored now. Donald Trump Lashes Out At Paramount Owners In Rant About Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Appearance On ‘60 Minutes’ [deadline.com]
Donald Trump said that the Ellison-owned Paramount is “no better than the old ownership” as he lashed out at the company over a 60 Minutes interview with new nemesis Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
[Lengthy Trump Truth Social rant in article]
Remember, everything is a quid-pro-quo with Trump, like this: Trump slams ‘lack of loyalty’ after pardoned [Texas] Democrat says he won’t change party [theguardian.com]. Trump literally expected this guy to switch from Democrat to Republican if he pardoned him -- which sounds like a bribe, that Trump (now) would be immune from prosecution thanks
Is he even sane? (Score:2, Informative)
It sounds like WBD rejected the offer for good reason.
Ellison is offering $72B for everything. Netflix is offering $72B for just studio and streaming assets.
So Ellison expects to get the whole cable network for free? Why would they even consider that?
Apparently there was a dispute over the value of their network... but it's surely greater than zero.
Re:Is he even sane? (Score:5, Informative)
Where did you get $72bn from? Right in TFA they say $30/share equates to $108.4 billion which is ultimately what Ellison's offer was. I don't think anyone has pretended that the cable part of the business is worth zero. Netflix's bid is $27.75/share
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Perhaps the board thinks the linear cable assets are worth more than the valuation that Paramount Skydance have given it, and the Netflix deal was accepted because they think they can get more for it as a separate entity?
Re:Is he even sane? (Score:5, Informative)
You're not wrong, but I think your numbers are a little off. NYT Numbers, cite below:
Netflix - $83B, no cable networks
Paramount - $108B, networks convey
Not sure what value I'd put on Discovery, etc., either. Those carriage fees can't be growing, and that $4/mo streamer Roku keeps pitching can't be that big...
---
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/1... [nytimes.com]
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You're not wrong, but I think your numbers are a little off. NYT Numbers, cite below:
Netflix - $83B, no cable networks Paramount - $108B, networks convey
Not sure what value I'd put on Discovery, etc., either.
The cable network parts were expected to be worth (somewhere) around $16B after the spin-out, which means Netflix's bid is worth (to the shareholders) in the range of $100B (as the shareholders still get the cable network).
The board will probably need to evaluate the Ellison offer.
Re:Is he even sane? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>Not sure what value I'd put on Discovery, etc., either. Those carriage fees can't be growing, and that $4/mo streamer Roku keeps pitching can't be that big...
Ellison/Trump wants CNN so they can turn it into another right-wing propaganda outlet like Fox News. They've already decided which anchors to get rid of. [theguardian.com]
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Your numbers are wrong.
Netflix offered $27 and change per share.
Paramount offered $30 per share. That is about 10% more.
You need to read the article, not just the summary.
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The offers are for different things, so are not directly comparable. Netflix' offer didn't include buying their CATV channels (CNN, Discovery, Turner...), so a comparison requires considering what value those have.
You need to keep reading.
Ellison wants it for his son (Score:5, Insightful)
Ellison wants it so his son can go to premiers and pretend he did something to earn his place in society and not nepotism.
Re: Ellison wants it for his son (Score:5, Insightful)
$27.75 per share vs $30 per share (Score:2)
Hmmm which do we think the shareholder wants?
It's complicated (Score:5, Interesting)
If they want an immediate payout, then the $30 bid is good, but with most of the deal being debt-financed, it's a leveraged buyout. As Paramount-Skydance is still in the reorganization phase of its recent merger, this is the sort of company that will go belly-up quick through mismanagement. Does nobody remember the weird post-war companies that turned into conglomerates in the 60s and 70s through insane buying sprees that eventually went away in the 90s and early 2000s? Even Paramount itself was at one time owned by one of those weird conglomerates... the Gulf+Western years.
If the shareholders aren't toddlers and can hold out for two cookies ten minutes from now, they'll choose the Netflix deal.
Once More el Bunko strikes (Score:3, Insightful)
Ellison's sprog is an el Bunko favorite, a right-wingnut. So naturally, el Bunko figures he can destroy the Netflix deal and throw the remains to Ellison's sprog, for which there will be a trail of bread crumbs back to his pockets. He never does anything except for himself.
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This just in, part of the investment group of Paramount/Skydance is......ta da.....Jared Kushner, who is backed by the Arab Gulf regimes. So el Bunko is sticking his dick into the Netflix deal so he can benefit Kushner. And that's not the only property they want, they want CNN as well.
This would leave major media companies controlled by Arabs. Netflix is an American company. el Bunko will have many avenues for accepting "tribute" for all his "hard" work.
It's about Israel again.. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wish they could just keep it simple, have defined borders, withdraw to the 1967 borders, live and let live, and stop trying to be the regional hegemon. Most of the world, in including Palestinians begrudgingly, would accept the Israeli state if it wasn't inherently expansionist and if it would allow Palestinians full autonomy within the areas they were forced into(1967 or even 1948).
Re: It's about Israel again.. (Score:2)
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I quoted the article about how Ellison is buying media companies to shape public opinion on Israel. The rest of what you have to say is equally detached from fact and reality.
There was nothing in the article about Ellision Buying media companies to shape public opinion that I saw. I didn't click on the link you posted because it comes from a left wing propaganda magazine but after glancing at the article, Ellison said no such thing, it's all assumptions made by authors pandering to the left. In fact, some of the investors with Ellison were Qatar and other Middle Eastern countries hostile to Israel. Regardless, if anyone Jewish was trying to shape public opinion on Israel via pu
Re: It's about Israel again.. (Score:2)
Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
Re: (Score:2)
From the Hamas Charter:
Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea. However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
Hamas claims to agree to a "interim" Palestinian state along the 1967 borders but will still not recognize Israel. That is barely an improvement from all or nothing. Israel left Gaza and we saw what happened with Hamas was in charge. Let's also quote this from their charter which is an absolute false statement since the land was first Pagan, then Jewish, then Jewish and Christian and then only Islamic at the end (since Islam is the last of the religions formed): "3. Palestine is an Arab Islamic land. It i
Re: It's about Israel again.. (Score:2)
Hamas claims to agree to a "interim" Palestinian state along the 1967 borders but will still not recognize Israel. That is barely an improvement from all or nothing. Israel left Gaza and we saw what happened with Hamas was in charge.
What we saw was a military blockade, Israel controlling ever aspect of Palestinian's lives, their coming and going from Palestine, periodic "mowing the lawn," and the list goes on. For those who think Palestinians didn't try peaceful means, please look up "The Great March of Return."
Israel never left Gaza. They turned it into an open air prison camp.
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Hamas claims to agree to a "interim" Palestinian state along the 1967 borders but will still not recognize Israel. That is barely an improvement from all or nothing. Israel left Gaza and we saw what happened with Hamas was in charge.
What we saw was a military blockade, Israel controlling ever aspect of Palestinian's lives, their coming and going from Palestine, periodic "mowing the lawn," and the list goes on. For those who think Palestinians didn't try peaceful means, please look up "The Great March of Return." Israel never left Gaza. They turned it into an open air prison camp.
The reason for the blockade was the constant terrorism. I think the people of Gaza and the West Bank got what they asked for. When they sent their fellow people to blow up buses, stab innocent people and to use their vehicles to try to ram Israelis with the cars. When they celebrated every Israeli killed and called the murderers hero's and paid their family salaries based on how many people were killed. Yes check points were put up, the same thing happened at the U.S airports and other airports around the w
Re: It's about Israel again.. (Score:2)
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Israel has citizens beyond the borders you're talking about, many who were born there or brought there as children. So withdrawing is not an option. You can argue, reasonably or unreasonably, that's unjust, but you have to deal with the world the way it is, not how you got there. It would create new injustices to undo the changes, not right a wrong.
It would be wonderful to time travel back to the late 1940s, get Truman to offer Texas as a location for the new Jewish state, and avoid the problem altogether.
Re: It's about Israel again.. (Score:2)
Taking the number of studios from 5 down to 4 (Score:4, Interesting)
If Netflix were to buy Warner, there would still be a "Big 5". If Paramount buys it, we go to 4. Is that good, bad, meaningless? I don't know.
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If Netflix were to buy Warner, there would still be a "Big 5". If Paramount buys it, we go to 4. Is that good, bad, meaningless? I don't know.
(Old) Hollywood is terrified of big tech. They see changes coming that will impact the way the business has operated for many decades. Sort of like some people are terrified of AI (their jobs will change, or be eliminated). Change will happen (no matter who wins the acquisition). Unless you can accurately predict the future it is not possible to know the good, bad, and meaningless changes that will happen (either in Hollywood, or AI, or ...)
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The shareholders will take the money, of course (Score:3)
Just one of many anti-trust failures... (Score:2)
But fsck that family more than Netflix.
No big deal (Score:2)
I'm not particularly alarmed. I figure that most movies will be generated by small studios and indies using AI in the coming years. The big studios spending hundreds of $millions per movie will fall to the wayside. There will be an explosion of creativity as costs go down and the price of failure is reduced.
we heard this with Final Fantasy Spirits Within (Score:2)
I'm not particularly alarmed. I figure that most movies will be generated by small studios and indies using AI in the coming years. The big studios spending hundreds of $millions per movie will fall to the wayside. There will be an explosion of creativity as costs go down and the price of failure is reduced.
Bold proclamation, but 25 years ago, Sony publicly predicted on their press tour that CGI would replace actors...it never did. Will AI be integrated into entertainment?...absolutely....will anyone want to see that slop?...I doubt it. Sony was proud of Final Fantasy Spirits Within and back in 2000, I thought it looked really rad...now it looks like a PS4 game. But even in 2000, I knew it wouldn't replace the real thing. I honestly didn't like it very much. It was tolerable, but not an upgrade to live ac
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You are welcome to your opinion on this of course, but I disagree. Modern AI-generated content is not the same as ancient CGI. Things that were done in the year 2000 don't compare to the state of the art today.
>> It's doubtful AI will do so much better to put everyone out of business
In the near future writers will come up with a screenplay and a set of AI agents will generate much of the movie. There will still be human actors, set designers, costumers, etc but there won't be the massively expensive s
I use Claude 4.5 daily + drink the kool aid (Score:2)
>> I use Claude daily...it can't write Java with correct syntax reliably
I use it daily too, and in my experience it can code as well as any human except much faster. Are you using Claude Opus 4.5? If that doesn't work well for you try Gemini 3.
I use 4.5 daily and it generates code that compiles about 50% of the time. I write a lot of Java lambdas and it inserts semi-colons where commas should be and rarely matches braces correctly. My best guess is it's too stupid to know that and opening parenthesis can occur without a semi-colon, like chained method calls in lambdas.
Look, if you think "it can code as well as any human except much faster"...then you're drinking the AI kool aid...or you work with the world's shittiest developers. However,
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Well I'm sorry you aren't have good success with Claude but clearly many people do including myself. I code in JavaScript and Python, Claude is a whiz at that and I get at least 20k lines of professional-level code from it or Gemini 3 per month.
>> we'll see it in companies actually having success utilizing them
Maybe its just you.
'90% of software developers are using AI at work — with 65% "heavily reliant" on it.'
https://tech.co/news/90-develo... [tech.co]
>> You'd see a spending spree of existing sof
Except... (Score:3)
For a further read (Score:2)