Who Gets Warner Bros? Four Possibilities In The Air

David Zaslav’s disastrous reign over Warner Bros Studios has reached the conclusion everyone always figured it would: after dismantling the company to a shadow of itself, he’s now going to sell. But to who? There are four possibilities in the air now, and none are set in stone. None of them are sunshine and daisies either, but some outcomes are preferable to others.

Netflix

It was rumored, but today the newswire was able to confirm Netflix is making a bid for ownership of Warner Bros. Of the possible options, this is the most positive (in a manner of speaking), as Netflix doesn’t own a movie studio and the number of them wouldn’t decrease. There is the risk, though, of Netflix carrying their “we hate movies” mindset into WB, and then WB just never releases another theatrical movie.

Paramount

Paramount was just bought by Skydance Media. We dodged a bullet there because there were several other suitors and some were other movie studios, which would’ve contracted the industry. So thank goodness — oh wait. The danger isn’t over; Paramount now wants to buy someone itself. I admit I don’t understand how this is even possible. After going through a merger, you have a lot of debt to pay off. You shouldn’t be able to even THINK of buying something else equally huge. Also a Paramount / WB megablob would result in less industry jobs, fewer choices for consumers, and would help no one except the few at the top.

Comcast

CEO Mike Cavanaugh said in an investor call yesterday “I don’t think M&A is necessary” (which stands for Merger And Acquisition). Even still, there’s an outside chance they could make their own play for WB. There was a chance a few years ago that Comcast could have bought 20th Century Studios from Fox, but Disney put in a bigger bid. The problem then remains the problem now: they already own Universal. In a perfect world, you would be forbidden from owning two!

Nobody

Turns out it was all one of Zaslav’s mind games, like pretending to open bids for Coyote Vs Acme and then rejecting all of them (and then, weirdly, selling it a year later). He’s suggested this is the case by rejecting Paramount’s first bid. In this scenario the original plan comes to fruition, with WB’s cable networks being spun off into their own company, saddled with the debt WB is trying to get rid of — the whole point of the thing. WB lives on as its own entity, but the cable networks die — and as someone who needs his Smiling Friends and Rick And Morty and the creative pipeline that Adult Swim continues to be to this day, I have a problem with that.