Five Billion-Dollar Titans Are Circling Warner Bros. Assets

Warner Bros. Discovery is basically passing around the menu and asking who wants what. Multiple giants are sniffing around the studio behind DC, HBO, CNN, and Harry Potter, and the board has kicked off a full strategic review. Translation: nothing is off the table yet, and the process just got real.

Who is poking around

• Paramount (now paired with Skydance)
• Comcast/NBCUniversal
• Netflix
• Amazon
• Apple

Per multiple outlets, WBD is preparing to ask interested buyers to sign NDAs so the company can share the sensitive stuff under the hood. That typically means we are moving from 'hey, are you interested?' to 'prove you are serious.' Apple and Amazon have reportedly expressed interest, but both declined to comment.

Where the dealmaking stands

On Tuesday, WBD told investors its board launched a strategic review after it got a wave of unsolicited overtures. The pitches range from buying the whole company to taking just the Warner Bros. studios and streaming businesses. Behind the scenes, David Zaslav told senior execs that Amazon and Apple have also raised their hands, joining the previously reported Netflix and Comcast camp.

Paramount is pushing the hardest

Paramount Skydance has been the most aggressive suitor, with four bids in about a month. The first three landed between $19 and just under $24 per share and were turned down as too low. The latest offer: $23.50 per share, paid in a mix of cash and stock with the cash portion jacked up to 80% (it was 60% before). The company also bumped the reverse breakup fee to $2.1 billion from $2 billion if regulators or shareholders block the deal.

Two key numbers to keep straight:

- Paramount says $23.50 is an 87% premium to WBD’s share price before anyone reported it was looking to bid. That’s the pre-rumor baseline.
- For reference, WBD closed at $20.53 on Wednesday.

Paramount’s pitch is clear: they think they are the only buyer that can actually get this through Washington, and they are dangling titles to sweeten the pot. One detail that definitely raised eyebrows: they floated the idea of David Zaslav serving as co-CEO of the combined company.

'We are confident that we are the best partner for WBD, with a combination of our two companies creating a scaled Hollywood champion... Other potential acquirers of WBD — today or in the future — would need to overcome significant (perhaps insurmountable) hurdles given their dominant market positions.'

They also pointed to analysts who peg a WBD breakup value around $15 per share on average, which is well below their $23.50 takeout price. That is a not-so-subtle way of saying: take the bird in the hand.

If Paramount actually pulls this off

It would be a seismic studio mashup. You are combining two legacy Hollywood houses with serious box office clout. On the news side, CNN and CBS News would live under the same roof. On streaming, Paramount Plus and HBO Max would be fused into a very large service with reach into hundreds of millions of devices. Love it or hate it, the consolidation would reshape how movies and shows get financed, marketed, and windowed.

WBD’s other options (and the messy part)

Make no mistake, WBD isn’t just entertaining one path. The company signaled it is also weighing a breakup that would split the business in two. One variation that is floating around: sell off Discovery while merging the Warner Bros. assets with a partner. That is not a done plan, just one of several routes on the whiteboard.

Regulators will have a lot to say here. Any deal of this size is almost certainly headed for a government review, which would run through the Trump administration. And this bit of history is… complicated: federal regulators approved Skydance’s takeover of Paramount after CBS agreed to pay Donald Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over a '60 Minutes' segment tied to his presidential campaign. That does not automatically predict how this WBD review would go, but it is part of the context everyone in the room knows.

What WBD is telling its own people

Zaslav’s line is that outsiders are finally valuing the portfolio the way he does, which is why the inbound interest is hot. The company is moving to a formal process (hello, NDAs) to figure out the best way to 'unlock value' — corporate-speak for sell something, merge something, or split something. None of those options are mutually exclusive until a definitive agreement is signed.

The read

Paramount is clearly in the pole position right now, if only because they are the ones actually writing bigger checks and putting names on org charts. But WBD is still shopping. Expect more bids, more leaks, and a lot of lawyers. Whether this ends with a mega-merger, a clean split, or a surprise tech buyer depends on two things: price and politics.