The battle between Netflix and Paramount over the fate of Warner Bros. Discovery has concluded with a decidedly odd outcome: Everybody won. At least that’s Wall Street’s opinion on the saga.
It all began last December when WBD agreed to sell its Warner Bros. studio and HBO Max streaming service to the streaming giant Netflix. Days later, Paramount Skydance lobbed in a hostile bid to buy all of WBD. Amid multiple twists and turns—and the CEOs of both bidding companies separately visiting President Trump to make their cases—WBD declared on Feb. 26 that it would agree to Paramount’s bid, which had gone through various permutations to make it more appealing. Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos declined to sweeten the offer, saying that for Netflix the deal had always been nice-to-have, not need-to-have.
