MOVIE NEWS – The bidding war between Netflix, Comcast, and Paramount has finally ended: on Friday, Netflix announced that it will acquire film studio Warner Bros. Discovery together with its streaming service HBO Max, and according to the New York Times, the total price, including the studio’s debt,s comes to roughly 82.7 billion dollars.
Netflix is already the world’s largest paid streaming service, with more than 300 million subscribers. By taking over Warner, the company is poised to become an even bigger media behemoth that, the paper notes, could wield unprecedented leverage over movie theater chains and entertainment industry unions.
Warner Bros. has just come off one of the strongest summers in its history: Ryan Coogler’s Sinners and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another both turned into box office hits and are widely seen as likely Oscar contenders. HBO has long been Hollywood’s leading premium television channel, home to series like Euphoria, The Gilded Age, and The White Lotus. With the acquisition, these shows and major franchises such as Harry Potter, Batman, and HBO’s full slate of prestige programming all move under the Netflix umbrella.
This deal makes Warner Bros. the first of the traditional major Hollywood studios to fall under the direct control of a Silicon Valley tech giant.
“Together, we can give audiences even more of what they love and help define the next century of storytelling,” said Ted Sarandos, Netflix’s co-chief executive, in his statement on the announcement.
Paramount and Comcast were also in the running with serious bids, but in the end, it was Netflix’s offer that won out. One of the key promises tied to the deal is that Warner Bros. Discovery’s feature films will continue to receive theatrical releases, rather than being shifted straight to streaming.
The agreement still needs approval from federal regulators in the United States. It is not yet clear how the Trump administration will view a transaction that many critics see as an attempt to sideline competitors. Earlier this week, a group of film producers sent an anonymous letter to Congress warning that “Netflix views every trip to the cinema as time stolen from its platform. It has no interest in supporting the theatrical experience, but every incentive to see it eliminated.”
The unsigned letter also voiced concern about what it called the “monopolistic control of the streaming market”, arguing that Netflix’s growing dominance could ultimately hurt movie theaters and creative freedom alike.
