Netflix puts in a mostly cash bid for Warner Bros Discovery, as the latest round of offers go in for the company. I worked with a man called Ian Betteridge for a while, who some of you may know as the man who came up with Betteridge’s Law. As you can read here, the law ... Warner Bros Discovery takeover | Might Netflix have just taken pole position?
Netflix puts in a mostly cash bid for Warner Bros Discovery, as the latest round of offers go in for the company.
I worked with a man called Ian Betteridge for a while, who some of you may know as the man who came up with Betteridge’s Law. As you can read here, the law suggests that any question being asked in a seemingly-clickbait headline can always be answered with one word: No.
Well, ha! Take this, Ian. Because it looks like this one might be a yes, as the depressing sale of Warner Bros Discovery gathers pace.
With Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav continuing his quest to ‘maximise shareholder value’ or something (translation: sell a storied old studio to make some rich people richer, never mind the impact on the industry/everyone else), the sale has narrowed down to three main parties.
There’s Skydance, fresh from acquiring Paramount, laying people off, and greenlighting Rush Hour 4 just to make one man happy. There’s Comcast, the current owners of Universal. And then there’s Netflix, the only bidder that doesn’t currently own an existing traditional; movie studio.
A new round of offers for Warner Bros Discovery was submitted yesterday, in line with the fresh deadline that was set down. Reports suggest that Netflix might have moved itself into a good position now as well, with its offer being mainly made up of cash.
On the flip side, both Netflix and Comcast are said to be only interesting in a part of the Warner Bros Discovery empire, namely the Warner Bros business and HBO Max as well. Only Skydance is willing to buy the lot, which also includes legacy cable television stuff.
There’s a strong chance we could find out who the preferred bidder for all of this stuff is going to be this side of Christmas, although it’ll still take a while for the transaction to jump through regulatory hurdles. In the US, the current way to fast track this is to capitulate to the ruling administration and give Brett Ratner a bit of work by the looks of it.
More as we hear it, not least to see if we can do a few more headlines to keep my old chum Ian on his toes…
