December 14, 2025

MEGAN MCARDLE: Why does anyone want to buy Warner Brothers, anyway?

Break out the popcorn and a jumbo box of Raisinets, because just when we thought the Warner Bros. Discovery drama was over, it turned out we had barely gotten started. The suspense over the company’s pending sale is mounting, and new questions are developing faster than writers can resolve old ones. Which suitor will shareholders choose? Will regulators block the deal? Will any of these characters find happily ever after?

If you remember last week’s episode, Netflix beat out Comcast and David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance to buy WBD — or at least its studio and streaming business, which are the bits everyone really wants. If you kept following the show, you’ve seen the action heat up: Ellison has launched a hostile bid for WBD, arguing that its shareholders would do better by taking $30 per share from him to buy the whole company, including its cable television stations — CNN, TNT, TBS and lifestyle outlets such as HGTV — than by getting $27.75 per share from Netflix for just the studio and streaming.

Spoiler alert: Cord-cutting is decimating the cable business so rapidly that this is a reasonable argument, even though the cable stations currently generate higher revenue and gross margins than streaming or studio. Between WBD’s debt and declining cable subscribers, there’s just not much future value left in those assets.

So stay tuned for more twists and turns! Eventually writers might resolve the biggest mystery: Why does anyone want to buy this company, anyway?

Fortunately, one august institution is dedicated to saving Warner Brothers from its ignoble fate: British cinemas demand Labour intervene against Netflix’s Hollywood takeover.

Cinemas have urged Labour to intervene in the planned takeover of Warner Bros by Netflix, warning that the deal would result in a “much thinner” selection of films for audiences.

Industry bosses have written to media minister Ian Murray to raise concerns about the streaming giant’s $83bn acquisition of the Hollywood studio behind major franchises such as Harry Potter, arguing that it could result in fewer films being released in cinemas.

In the letter sent to MPs on both the culture select committee and business and trade committee, Phil Clapp, the chief executive of the UK Cinema Association, said the takeover would be a “significant blow” to the industry – which is still struggling to recover from the pandemic.

Mr Clapp warned that audiences would be the biggest losers from the proposed deal, adding that it would also lead to significant job losses.

The trade group urged Mr Murray to take an active interest in the takeover and called on both committees to launch an inquiry.

Yes, launch an inquiry – write some really stern letters, England. That ought to do the job! But as John Podhoretz noted last week, we could be witnessing the “end of moviegoing” as we used to know it:

And in a thread Twitter/X McArdle explained why she didn’t bother going into details in her Washington Post article about Ellison’s goal of acquiring CNN along with Warner Brothers, as aging viewers and declining numbers mean that technology is also reaching its twilight years as destination viewing:

 

Posted at 12:14 pm by Ed Driscoll