Posted by Jennifer Asencio | Published
The bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery is over, and it looks like Paramount has emerged victorious. Netflix has dropped its bid for the studio and production company of the century, and it is now in the hands of Paramount Skydance. The news shook the entertainment industry and sparked speculation about the future of Warner Bros. properties, including HBO, CNN, and the DC Comics franchise, which includes Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman among its popular heroes.
The sale of Warner Brothers’ film collection has been a hot topic for those watching the entertainment industry. Netflix has announced it has dropped its bid for the catalog, leaving Paramount as the winning bidder. It cost Paramount Skydance Studios an estimated $111 billion to protect a catalog that goes back more than a century.
Three Enter, One Bidder Leaves
Netflix has relied on Warner Bros.’s history of success in the entertainment industry to grow its catalog, given its new position in movie production and distribution. So was Paramount, which made a bid for the ailing studio and its assets in September 2025. Warner Bros. formally rejected the offer in October, allowing Comcast and Netflix to make their own bids.
In the end, Comcast gave up, and in everyone’s opinion, only Netflix was an active player in the field with an offer approaching $ 82.7 billion. This top WBD stock is Ancora Alternatives LLC, which held its vote on February 11, 2026, on the grounds that Paramount’s complaints of favoring Netflix were true. This also opened up bidding and gave Paramount until February 23, 2026, to make a qualifying “higher offer” for Warner Bros.
Netflix had three days to make the offer and announced on February 26, 2026, that it would not do so.
Warner Bros. Has Been Covering Taxes For Years
The whole deal is shrouded in controversy. For several years, Warner Bros. has been writing off properties for tax purposes, including all movies and television shows. This included digital properties that people had purchased for themselves that simply disappeared from libraries without explanation. This tax write-off was also an indication of how much trouble the company was in.
Paramount’s move to make its first bid is seen as an aggressive takeover attempt. Warner Bros. and Paramount have been rivals for over a century. Combining their libraries puts a significant amount of cinema and television history under one umbrella. A successful Netflix bid would have given Netflix a larger share of the streaming market, as it currently controls over 19% while Paramount and Warner Bros. each controls about 11%. As it stands, Paramount is poised to control more of the market than Netflix and will be second only to Disney + and its streaming partners, Hulu and Fubo.
Warner Bros. and Paramount own several news services between them, including CNN and CBS. CBS News has come under fire after the promotion of Bari Weiss as news editor. Social media was abuzz with viewers wary that Weiss might take control of CNN because they thought he was too friendly to President Trump in his programming decisions. This is despite Weiss being a vocal critic of Trump in his previous career.
The Big Content Monsters of Our Future?
Another problem is the ability to limit access to media that has seen an increase in content coverage. Entertainment companies push their own programs or merge with other companies to combine their smaller catalogs, as the union of Paramount and Warner Bros. is about to do. The Paramount Plus app is notorious and failed for some users during the premiere of Survivor 50 on Wednesday, February 25. Paramount already releases much of its content produced before the 1980s, and acquiring the library of old rivals could mean that the collections of Warner Bros and HBO receive the same treatment.
Paramount Destruction of Lovely Buildings
Finally, there is the matter of Paramount destroying its buildings. Starfleet Academy it has been criticized for poor writing, destruction of Star Trek history, and loose insertions in places where such insertions do not make sense. Along with the track of programs like A survivorthe NCIS and CSI franchises, as well as the endless reboots of Matlock, Hawaii Five-O, and MacGuyver, signs indicate that the entertainment sector is heading into an area that poses serious questions about what Warner Bros. properties will become. such as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Harry Potter series, and the DC Universe, among others. HBO Max uses many of Akira Kurosawa’s classic movies, such as The Hidden Castle again Rashomon: what will happen to them under Paramount’s direction?
Now that the deal is finalized, the next step is to evaluate any antitrust issues we raise. This will require consideration by many governments outside of the United States, because each country Paramount wants to do business in has a different perspective on the proceedings.
Neither Netflix nor Paramount should be able to buy Warner Bros. All of the players involved, including Comcast, represent significant segments of the U.S. and foreign broadcast markets, as well as entertainment and news. It narrows the number of major entertainment companies down to just four.
Now, if the deal goes through on par with antitrust laws, the two oldest studios in Hollywood are about to join forces, for better or for worse.
