Netflix has agreed to buy the film and streaming businesses of Warner Bros Discovery for $72 billion, in a move that will reshape the US entertainment industry.
Netflix has become Hollywood’s most valuable company on the back of the streaming revolution. Warner Bros., meanwhile, has been struggling, thanks to debt taken on in a merger and the decline of traditional TV, though it still has a huge stable of valuable IP, including the Harry Potter franchise and hit shows on the HBO network.
The deal represents Netflix’s largest acquisition ever, and brings “one of Hollywood’s oldest and most revered studios” under the control of the already dominant streaming giant, Bloomberg noted.
The announcement rejects a bid by Paramount, the media company now owned by the family of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, one of the world’s richest people. Ellison’s alliance with President Donald Trump had put him in a strong position for regulatory approval of the deal, and the Netflix bid will leave Warner’s most visible news brand, CNN, outside Trump’s orbit.
