Netflix still has a page saying it bought Warner Bros and it lost the auction in February

Search for who owns Warner Bros. and the first thing you are likely to hit is Netflix's own announcement: Netflix to Acquire Warner Bros. It is dated 5 December 2025, it is still published, and it is out of date by seven months.

Netflix does not own Warner Bros. It lost.

What actually happened, in order

• September 2025 — Paramount Skydance's David Ellison opens at $19 a share, then $22, then $23.50. All rejected.
• 21 October 2025 — Warner Bros. Discovery's board puts the company up for auction.
• 20 November 2025 — first bids. Paramount offers $25.50 for the whole company. Netflix and Comcast bid only for the studios and streaming. Starz bids $25 billion for the cable networks.
• 1 December 2025 — second round. Netflix becomes preferred bidder at $27.75 a share.
• 5 December 2025 — the Netflix deal is announced.
• 8 December 2025 — Paramount goes hostile with an all-cash $30 a share.
• 17 February 2026 — Netflix grants a seven-day waiver; WBD reopens talks; Paramount verbally commits to at least $31.
• 26 February 2026 — WBD declares Paramount's bid superior. Netflix declines to raise and withdraws.
• 27 February 2026 — Paramount and WBD sign.

The $72 billion figure is real and is not the price

Netflix's December deal is almost always quoted as $72 billion. That is the equity value. The enterprise value was $82.7 billion, and the per-share offer was $27.75, made up of $23.25 in cash and $4.501 in Netflix stock.

Paramount's winning bid was $31 a share, all cash, valuing the business at roughly $110.9 billion. So the two numbers most often set against each other — $72 billion and $110.9 billion — are not measuring the same thing, and the real gap between the offers is narrower than that pairing suggests.

What was being sold, and what was not

Both bids were for the film and television studios, HBO and HBO Max, and the library: Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, Friends, The Wizard of Oz, the DC characters.

Not included: Warner Bros. Discovery's Global Networks division — CNN, TNT Sports, the Discovery channels — which separates into its own listed company, Discovery Global. That split was a precondition of the sale and was expected to complete in the third quarter of this year.

It has cleared the regulators and been stopped by a court

WBD shareholders approved on 23 April 2026. The Department of Justice signed off on 12 June, the European Commission on 22 July, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority on 6 August, along with a long list of other jurisdictions.

Then twelve state attorneys general sued in July to block it. The merger is currently blocked by a federal court, with the trial scheduled to conclude on 5 April 2027 and the transaction deadline extended to 1 June 2027.

So the answer to "who owns Warner Bros." is, as of today: Warner Bros. Discovery does. A buyer has been chosen, approved by shareholders and cleared by competition authorities on three continents, and is waiting on a courtroom.

What is still unknown

Whether the trial concludes in a judgment or a settlement — the docket allows for both. What happens to the Paramount agreement if the June 2027 deadline passes. And whether Netflix, having walked away once at $31, would return at all.

The largest transaction in the history of the film business has been announced twice, won by two different companies, and completed by neither. One of those announcements is still on the winner's—sorry, the loser's—website.