Warner Bros., the parent company of DC Comics and other big media assets, is heading toward undiscovered country as current owner Discovery Media is putting the famous studio back on the block. This isn’t the first, or second, or fifth time the one-time Hollywood giant has been bought up then unceremoniously tossed back out on the street after the glow of passion faded, and it’s not entirely surprising that the most recent merger with Discovery didn’t work out.
However, in today’s social and economic climate, the availability of a major cultural and media asset is triggering a feeding frenzy among competing conglomerates. The stakes are not just control of Superman and the rest of Warner Bros.’ blue chip IP, but also an important cog in the media ecosystem.
What’s going on? Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has been unofficially shopping Warner Bros. for a while now, looking to flip a valuable asset while demand is high to satisfy his shareholders. Originally, the plan was to split Warner Bros. and Discovery Global back into two separate companies (constituted differently than they were before the merger), but other media sharks, like David Ellison’s Skydance (now Paramount Skydance following the company’s other recent mega-merger, see “Paramount, Skydance Closing“), smelled blood in the water and produced an unsolicited offer to buy the company outright.
Zaslav reportedly wants to retain some measure of control over Warner Bros., something a deal with Ellison would likely not involve, but he also has to look after the best interests of stockholders, which means listening to offers. There’s also the matter of a reported $500 million he could put into his own pocket.
This situation has led to interest from the likes of Netflix, Comcast (owners of Universal Studios), Apple and Amazon, although none of these companies has yet put an offer on the table. Meanwhile Ellison and his plutocrat father Larry, multibillionaire founder of Oracle, have sweetened their offer several times, amping up the pressure on Zaslav to sell.
Handicapping the race. So far, there are only two official possibilities ahead for the company: either Discovery spins it off as originally announced (increasingly unlikely given the interest in acquisition), or it goes to Skydance, which has put multiple offers on the table.
Skydance has a few factors in its favor. First, the Ellison family is richer than God, with papa Larry adding a cool $50 billion to his net worth just this year (it’s now estimated at $340 billion, good for #2 on the Forbes list). Having just swallowed Paramount whole, the company has plenty of experience integrating big chunks into its existing operations, and clearly has an appetite for more.
Perhaps more importantly, the Ellison family appears to be in the good graces of the Trump regime, with the President referring to them as longtime trusted friends. No one at the commanding heights of political power cares much about Batman or Wonder Woman, unfortunately, but they are very, very interested in having control of CNN.
The Ellisons’ involvement is likely one factor driving interest from the likes of Apple and Amazon. Oracle is a big cog in the AI money-go-round, and the fellow tech giants, who have other motives for bolting more media assets onto their existing operations and plenty of cash, might not be enthusiastic about allowing a competitor to get a leg up.
I’d personally rate Apple’s chances higher than Amazon’s because Amazon appears to be spending every scrap of available cash on data centers to build out its cloud and AI services. As helpful as Warner Bros. would be to their streaming and IP ambitions, it can’t possibly be a high priority investment for them.
Comcast has also been mentioned. Again, this makes strategic sense if you don’t look too closely, because it aligns with their interests in building a vertical stack that includes both content and media services. However, Comcast has just finished spinning off part of its news and cable business and reorganizing Universal. The only reason to get in on Warner Bros. for them would be to prevent anyone else from doing it.
That brings us to Netflix, the most intriguing possibility and probably the best-case scenario for Warner Bros and DC. Netflix surely must be tempted by the possibility of owning Warner Bros’ massive IP library spanning comics, films and franchises like Harry Potter, as well as its studio and production assets and global distribution. But the price tag might be too high, especially if it includes stuff like Warner Bros.’ traditional cable networks, which don’t align with Netflix’s strategic priorities anyway.
The dog that isn’t barking right now is Disney, which is ill-positioned for a bidding war, even if they are likely to be the biggest loser if one of their competitors comes away with the prize.
Another factor is that a proposed acquisition by Apple, Netflix or especially Comcast would face much greater regulatory legal scrutiny from the current Justice Department anti-trust unit than an offer from a friendlier quarter.
What would an(other) WB acquisition mean for comics and fandom? On the positive side, we’ve been through this before. Kinney National Company first brought Warner Bros. together with DC Comics back in the late 1960s to form Warner Communications. Time joined the fray in 1990, making Time Warner, and in a very late-90s turn, inveigled onetime network giant America Online into the picture for a hot minute.
All those moves were largely benign for both the company and the creative talent, adding resources and capabilities, while leaving DC and other divisions to do their own thing. The skies darkened in 2016 when AT&T stepped in, for reasons still not clear, and began setting things on fire with rounds of layoffs and restructuring. After that, the consensus was that Discovery couldn’t be any worse, and they seem to have cleared that bar with room to spare.
If Skydance should prevail (and again, they are the only bidder to actually put their money where their mouth is) I’m sure we will see more rounds of “streamlining” and “corporate synergy.” Paramount is already being put to the sword, with massive layoffs starting today.
I also have a hard time seeing how Jim Lee sticks to his pledge to keep AI out of the picture, given that Oracle is all about our glorious robotic future and Skydance has “placed AI creation at its core.” And if all this media consolidation is about asserting cultural dominance, it will be very interesting to see how that plays out downstream, in the foundries and repositories of our storytelling heritage.
The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
Rob Salkowitz (Bluesky @robsalk) is the author of Comic-Con and the Business of Pop Culture, a two-time Eisner Award nominee, and a proud longtime contributor to Eisner-nominated ICv2.
Source: ICv2
