Get out your popcorn because there's more drama in the fight over the media powerhouse Warner Brothers Discovery:
Paramount Global has sweetened its offer to acquire Warner by a bunch, offering an all-cash deal valued at $108 billion to take over the parent company of HBO, Warner Bros. Studios and CNN, among other notable properties.
It would appear to significantly outstrip the deal worth $83 billion that Netflix and Warner announced just last Friday, although that agreement is solely for Warner's streaming service and studios. If that deal were to go through, CNN and other cable channels would be spun off.
Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest people, and his son David, the movie producer and founder of Skydance Media, took over Paramount this summer. It's the parent company of CBS, Paramount Studios, the Paramount+ streaming service and more.
Combining with Warner would let them create a Hollywood behemoth to take on Netflix, already the world's largest streamer. The Ellisons are also mindful of other major movie and TV streamers, particularly Amazon, Apple, and Disney, which bulked up a few years ago by acquiring most of Fox's entertainment assets.
The Ellisons started the ball rolling earlier this year, forcing the hand of Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav by making an unsolicited bid. He ultimately put the company on the chopping block.
In remarks on a conference call Monday with investors and reporters, Paramount executives accused Warner of "never engaging meaningfully" with its six various proposals.
Warner did not respond to a request for comment. Netflix is expected to hold a call with investors Monday afternoon.
Despite Zaslav's reluctance to sell to the Ellisons, they thought they had a dominant hand to play: they were offering a premium for the company's value on the open market and they were bidding for the entire enterprise.
What's more, they had built strong ties to President Trump, whose government regulators ultimately would have to approve any such acquisition by an already established major Hollywood player.
Larry Ellison is a donor, informal adviser and friend of the president. David Ellison has made two key hires at CBS — specifically in its news division — to ensure it will be perceived as less adversarial to Trump. A conservative former think tank chief has become its new ombudsman to review complaints. And Bari Weiss, founder of the right-of-center Free Press, has taken over the news division as editor in chief. Paramount's previous leadership had paid $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by Trump against CBS News that legal observers described as flimsy.
Presidential preferences are supposed to be held at arm's length from such reviews by antitrust regulators at the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Justice Department. But that's not how Washington operates under Trump.
Even so, Trump's approval is never a sure thing. The Netflix announcement stirred instant opposition from a handful of U.S. senators in both parties. Trump was noncommittal in remarks Sunday.
"Netflix is a great company and they've done a phenomenal job," Trump said. "They have a very big market share, and when they have Warner Bros., you know, that share goes up a lot, so I don't know, that's going to be for some economists to tell and also, I'll be involved in that decision too."
However, Monday morning, Trump lashed out at CBS News for a 60 Minutes interview with Trump ally-turned-critic U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican who has announced she is stepping down. Paramount came in for particular scorn.
"My real problem with the show, however, wasn't the low IQ traitor, it was that the new ownership of 60 Minutes, Paramount, would allow a show like this to air," Trump wrote Monday morning in a post on Truth Social — after the Ellisons announced their hostile bid for Warner. "THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP, who just paid me millions of Dollars for FAKE REPORTING about your favorite President, ME! Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!"
Editor's note: Warner Bros. Discovery is among NPR's financial supporters.
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