Last week, the industry got shook with the news that streaming giant Netflix was putting in an offer of roughly $72 billion to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (would also include multiple other divisions they own such as Cartoon Network, CNN, HBO and HBO Max), which raised concerns that the budding deal could greatly impact the studio’s future output and the fate of their theatrical windows (co-CEO Ted Sarandos has telegraphed shortening windows and moving that WB pipeline to the streaming service) alongside potential antitrust issues that even lawmakers like U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (an outspoken consumer advocate) has shared.
President Donald Trump, who recently entertained a meeting with Sarandos at the White House, said the following about the Netflix-WB deal with a quote from Bloomberg. Where Trump said during an event at the Kennedy Center, “Well, that’s got to go through a process, and we’ll see what happens,” then calling Sarandos “a fantastic man, I have a lot of respect for him, but it’s a lot of market share.”
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Fast forward to today, and David Ellison‘s Paramount Skydance, which had also been in the mix for bidding for the company, has announced (via Variety) that they’re heading toward a hostile takeover with a new bid said to be worth $108 billion, which also includes the assumption of debt. Their new offer is said to include $24 billion From Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi wealth funds, as well as Jared Kushner‘s Affinity Partners (Kushner being Trump’s son-in-law, who profited from his time in the White House, nabbing $2 billion investment from the Saudi fund, after he personally helped to secure a $110 billion arms deal between the Saudis and the U.S. government), according to an SEC filing by the company and interestingly after they denied previous reports they were getting investments from those groups.
Senator Warren has also shared further concerns about how Trump is getting personally involved with the WBD deal, as it should be handled independently by the Department of Justice without putting his thumb on the scales of justice. This red flag warning by Senator Warren isn’t unwarranted after there has been a rash of potential bribes to Trump (done through “donations” to his presidential museum and buying into his family’s crypto business as a way to curry favors from the president) to end antitrust troubles (for multiple banks, various businesses, and tech companies) and pardons (including the former President of Honduras after being convicted for trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. all done during what look to be illegal boatstrikes in the Carribean and a crypto billionaire linked to his family business).
We don’t know if this will ultimately see Paramount pushing Netflix out of the way, but the Ellison Family (notably are billionaire Trump donors) seems to believe they have someone in the White House who can help, as government approval of the deal is going to be a massive hurdle for either Netflix or Paramount. The Ellison, Kushner, and Trump families’ intermingling in business here is at very least a conflict of interest, and at worst another sign of the administration’s legacy of alleged corruption.
What happens when the dust settles is unknown, but it certainly sounds like Ellison isn’t taking “no” for an answer, which isn’t all that shocking given their connections to Trump, who has noted issues with consent (a noted sexual assaulter and potentially worse given his longstanding cover-up of his connections to Jeffrey Epstein) and being allergic to abiding by established law (has rejected or ignored multiple court orders alongside domestic/international laws he has violated within in the first year of his second term).
Today, Netflix announced our acquisition of Warner Bros. Together, we’ll define the next century of storytelling, creating an extraordinary entertainment offering for audiences everywhere. https://t.co/rXPFMNIs1A pic.twitter.com/0pdsMUEob8
— Netflix (@netflix) December 5, 2025
Donald Trump said he’ll “be involved in” deciding if Netflix can buy Warner Bros.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 8, 2025
Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals?
It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts. https://t.co/xYxYTdsjKm
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
- Christopher Marc
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- Christopher Marc
