Netflix-Warner Bros. Deal Is Off

Netflix is axing the proposed Netflix–Warner Bros. deal that has caused so much controversy.

A Thursday statement released by Netflix corporate stated, “Netflix, Inc. today announced that it has declined to raise its offer for Warner Bros.” Scrutiny from the Department of Justice and allegations of antitrust violations apparently contributed to killing the deal, though that was not specifically what the Netflix executives admitted. Now perhaps the federal government can engage in some more antitrust busting with other gargantuan monopolies like Google and Apple.

The Netflix statement declared that Warner Bros. Discovery’s (WBD) Board of Directors decided that Paramount Skydance’s (PSKY) “latest proposal constitutes a ‘Superior Proposal’ under the terms of WBD’s existing merger agreement with Netflix.” 

In response, Netflix’s co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced, “The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval. However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”

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The co-CEOs added a compliment directed at the competing company while still declining to move forward with the deal. “Warner Bros. is a world-class organization, and we want to thank David Zaslav, Gunnar Wiedenfels, Bruce Campbell, Brad Singer and the WBD Board for running a fair and rigorous process,” the Netflix executives said. “We believe we would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.’ iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the U.S. But this transaction was always a ‘nice to have’ at the right price, not a ‘must have’ at any price.”

In conclusion, the Netflix executives bragged, “we’ll invest approximately $20 billion in quality films and series and will expand our entertainment offering. Consistent with our capital allocation policy, we’ll also resume our share repurchase program.”

The deal originally was completed in 2025, but then federal antitrust investigations delayed the actual implementation of the deal. Netflix was going to take over Warner Bros. rather than pursue a merger or form a joint organization. Netflix revised the deal more than once, and it appears that eventually there was too much controversy and cost, not to mention government delays, to make the deal desirable.

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Netflix has a global streaming platform, and WBD of course has a huge content library and many lucrative film franchises, including Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Ocean's, Dune, and Mad Max. For obvious reasons, it would have been a significant upheaval within the entertainment industry.

But the deal that has caused such national furor will not come off after all. And considering how extremely woke Netflix is, and how invested it is in radical LGBTQ ideology, that's probably a very good thing.

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