Warner Bros. Discovery is about to dive into the nitty-gritty work of deciding whether to sell itself — in whole or in part.
The 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 source with knowledge of the situation said that those three entities did submit nonbinding, preliminary offers by the noon ET deadline. It’s unclear if there were other expressions of interest.
Multiple sources noted that the bidding process required participants to sign nondisclosure agreements, as is commonplace. Paramount Skydance, Netflix and Comcast declined to comment as did Warner Bros. Discovery.
Last month, Warner Bros. Discovery announced that it had received in-bound M&A interest from “multiple parties” and kicked off a process to review offers. WBD’s board wants to review the initial offers before Thanksgiving, with the goal of deciding the way forward before the end of 2025.
David Ellison, fresh off closing the deal forming Paramount Skydance in August, is known to have submitted bids for WBD in its entirety; in October, the Warner Bros. Discovery board rejected his $23.50/share offer of 80% cash and 20% stock (which also proposed making David Zaslav co-chairman and co-CEO of the merged company). Paramount Skydance’s 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’s previous $23.50/share offer, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
WBD said it will consider proposals in which the Warner Bros. business (HBO Max and studios) is sold separately from Discovery Global, the TV-centric company. That aligns with Warner Bros. Discovery’s 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.
Netflix and Comcast, which is splitting NBCUniversal in two with the spin-off of the Versant cable-focused company by year-end, have been looking to acquire the Warner Bros. streaming and studio operations — they aren’t interested in WBD’s cable TV business.
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Ellison has made the case that Paramount is the best suitor for WBD, and that combining the companies would produce a scaled-up media and entertainment powerhouse across streaming, TV and film. The Ellison camp also sees a Paramount takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery as encountering the least regulatory obstacles; it’s 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’s coverage of Trump.
Netflix is looking to get its hands on Warner Bros.’s 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 among some politicos. Meanwhile, sources said Netflix has reassured WBD that it would honor the latter’s theatrical distribution deals to keep Warner Bros. films in cinemas in the event its bid is successful.
From Variety US