Paramount Skydance wins Warner Bros Discovery bid after Netflix walks away from deal
Paramount Skydance has beaten Netflix to take over Warner Bros Discovery’s storied Hollywood studios and streaming business after the streaming giant refused to increase its bid,The $110bn deal ends a high-stakes bidding war between the two media companies, but the takeover still faces regulatory hurdles and a backlash from critics worried about a rightward tilt in US media,David Ellison, chairman and CEO of Paramount, said: “From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company,”In a statement on Thursday evening, the Netflix co-chief executives Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters said: “At the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive,”Netflix was given four business days to beat Paramount’s revised offer but quickly decided against doing so.
“We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the US,” Sarandos and Peters said.“But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”David Zaslav, the president and chief executive of Warner Bros Discovery, released a statement on Thursday evening calling Netflix “a great company” and praising its leadership.Netflix’s unwillingness to revise its $82.7bn offer for the studio and streaming assets of Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) means the Ellison family, who owns Paramount Skydance, are now expected to acquire the entirety of the company, including the cable news network CNN.
“Once our board votes to adopt the Paramount merger agreement, it will create tremendous value for our shareholders,” Zaslav said.“We are excited about the potential of a combined Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery and can’t wait to get started working together telling the stories that move the world.”Ellison, a longtime supporter of Donald Trump, said earlier on Thursday that his company was pleased the Warner Bros board had “unanimously affirmed the superior value of our offer”, which he said delivered “WBD shareholders superior value, certainty and speed to closing”.In response to the potential Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros merger, the US senator Elizabeth Warren told the Guardian it was “an antitrust disaster threatening higher prices and fewer choices for American families”.She said: “What did Trump officials tell the Netflix CEO today at the White House? A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want.
With the cloud of corruption looming over Trump’s Department of Justice, it’ll be up to the American people to speak up and state attorneys general to enforce the law.”Netflix’s announcement that it was backing away from the deal came after Sarandos held meetings in Washington with Trump administration officials.The merger was expected to receive close regulatory scrutiny, including a thorough review by the Department of Justice to determine whether it posed a threat to competition in the entertainment industry.Officials in the White House have long preferred the bid from Paramount, considering that the Ellison family has a friendly relationship with the president.However, regulatory scrutiny will now focus on the combination with Paramount.
Last week, the California department of justice opened an investigation into the takeover, regardless of the victor.Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, said: “It is not a done deal.These two Hollywood titans have not cleared regulatory scrutiny … and we intend to be vigorous in our review.The proposed WBD transactions must receive a full and robust review, and California is taking a very close look.”Ben Barringer, the head of technology research at the investment management firm Quilter Cheviot, said a Paramount takeover would probably not “shake the media industry out as much as if Netflix had been successful”.
Job cuts appear inevitable, with $3bn already announced after the merger of Skydance and Paramount, and a further $6bn in post-WBD takeover synergies revealed in filings..Robert Fishman, a senior analyst at MoffettNathanson, said winning the bidding war was crucial for Paramount, which has lined up $54bn in debt to complete the takeover.“This result confirms our ongoing view that WBD was a necessity for Paramount Skydance while Netflix was being opportunistic,” he said.
Seth Meyers on Team Trump’s Iran threats: ‘These guys speak like they’ve been hit on the head’
On Thursday night, late-night hosts remarked on the Jeffrey Epstein investigations, the threat of a US attack on Iran and Donald Trump nominating a wellness influencer as the next US surgeon general.Meyers focused on the president’s criticisms of a landmark 2015 deal between Iran and world powers in which the country agreed to curb their nuclear program. “I’ve been making lots of wonderful deals, great deals,” Trump said. “That’s what I do. Never in my life have I seen any transaction so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran
How to keep free entry to UK museums and galleries | Letters
I believe that national museums should be free for all. Your report (Is the UK’s golden era of free museum entry coming to an end?, 21 February) quoted me from a Daily Telegraph article that selectively used parts of a much longer interview. I said in principle that people would be willing to pay; however, I then outlined all the reasons this would not work financially, practically and ethically. I do not wish to be represented as a mouthpiece for those who wish to introduce charges.Nick MerrimanHastingleigh, Kent There is an easy answer to the budget difficulties faced by many UK art galleries and museums: identity cards
‘You’re sweet – and I’m old!’: Billy Porter and Sam Morrison on teaming up for a comedy about love and death
The Emmy-winning singer and actor was so struck by the standup’s autobiographical one-man show Sugar Daddy that he signed on as producer. The pair discuss ‘bears’, blood sugar and bridging the divides between generations of gay menSugar Daddy is a one-man show about “love, grief and insulin” by the 31-year-old standup Sam Morrison. An autobiographical monologue that turns tragedy into comedy, it tells of how Morrison fell in love with Jonathan, who was 24 years his senior, after meeting him at a gay bear festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts. In 2021, two and a half years into their relationship, Jonathan died from Covid.For the last four years, Morrison has been performing Sugar Daddy around the world; next month he brings an updated version to London’s West End
‘Seems I’m not dead’: Magda Szubanski says she is in remission after treatment for stage four cancer
Magda Szubanski has revealed the “fantastic news” she has finished chemotherapy and is in remission from a rare, aggressive cancer she was diagnosed with nine months ago.Wishing her fans a “Happy Mardi Gras” in a video on Instagram on Friday, Szubanski said: “I wanted to share the fantastic news, which is that I’ve completed chemo, and I am now in remission. So phew, big relief.“It’s not a cure, but because I’ve got a good remission, that hopefully means that I will … keep the cancer at bay for a good long time.”In May the 64-year-old actor and comedian said she had stage four mantle cell lymphoma, an uncommon and aggressive form of non-Hodgkin lymphoma and said she had shaved her head ahead of treatment
Seth Meyers on Trump’s State of the Union address: ‘A vehicle to attack anyone who doesn’t bend the knee’
Late-night hosts tore into Donald Trump’s extremely long State of the Union address and a bombshell new report on redactions from the Jeffrey Epstein files.Donald Trump arrived to his State of the Union address on Tuesday evening with low expectations and even lower goodwill, with his approval rating hovering somewhere around a dismal 36%. “So the polling was bad before the speech and bad after the speech,” Seth Meyers reported on Wednesday evening, “and on top of that it was long and boring,” clocking in at a record one hour and 47 minutes.Or, if you’re Republican, it was “the best State of the Union speech that I’ve seen”, to quote the House speaker, Mike Johnson. Ted Cruz went one step further, calling it “majestic”
‘The sky’s the limit’: Newcastle Art Gallery unveils its ‘divisive’ $48m expansion with a blockbuster opening show
On Friday night, the Newcastle Art Gallery (NAG) is throwing open its doors and filling the road and park with giant fluffy doughnuts, live music, dancing and art in a free-for-all street party – themed “industrial disco” – that has been 16 years in the making.For the NAG team, and Novocastrians more broadly, this is a significant moment, marking the long-awaited completion of the $48m gallery expansion project, which went from being “very divisive” in the community to something that’s generating “a remarkable buzz and excitement,” according to Jeremy Bath, the CEO of Newcastle city council.Now the largest public gallery in NSW outside of Sydney, it opens with the major exhibition Iconic Loved Unexpected, displaying 500 artworks from its 7,000-strong collection. Displayed over the 13 gallery spaces (eight of which are new, in a floor space that’s more than double that of the 1997 building), it’s a star-studded showcase of the gallery’s $145m collection, including Australian greats Emily Kam Kngwarray, John Olsen, Margaret Preston, Brett Whiteley, Daniel Boyd and Margaret Olley.It’s the headliners who will draw the crowds, but the gallery – led by the NAG director, Lauretta Morton – has been intentional in championing lesser-known local artists, too
Diagnosing mental health conditions need not be a case of yes/no | Letters
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