Netflix announces deal to buy Warner Bros. and HBO
Netflix announced the blockbuster deal with Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday morning. It has agreed to buy the legendary TV and movie studio and assets like the HBO Max streaming service for $72 billion.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/12/05/media/netflix-deal-warner-brosOpen linkView original on lemmy.world
64 replies
Soooo, does that mean consumers have one less streaming service to subscribe to or would Netflix just do a price hike to make up for it?
Oh yes, market concentration definitely improves the user experience in the long run.
Provides more opportunities to loot the seas.
Been at it 25 yrs and still going strong.
I have been involved in that ship for a long time (I never gave up) but it is evident that the best years in series production are behind us and less competition I don't think will improve it, it doesn't matter how you look at it, stranger things is not at the level of house of cards to name two from the same platform
and then we will also see trickle down working?
Probably like Disney/Hulu
They'll try a bundle deal to see if people pay for it, then if not slowly bleed shows from one service to another.
Maybe eventually combine them but they'll try to keep paying for both as long as possible
I bet it will be more like Prime where they display everything they own to tempt you, but there's an increasing number of additional subscriptions you actually need to access the content.
We are back at cable packages level again.
¿Porque no los dos?
I expect it'll be an extra charge, like with HBO
When Discovery merged with WB/HBOMAX most (all?) of the Discovery content (previously only on the Discovery+ paid streaming service) showed up on HBOMAX. So perhaps it will mean something similar here that it will mean getting more for less like it did then.
We’re about to see how much Netflix wants to kiss the ring and what lines they’ll cross for Trump.
Larry Ellison also wants Warner Discovery. He's kissed the ring so much that Trump has to wash the slobber off.
So we'll see. Larry Ellison is the worst option here, even worse than media consolidation and price hikes, because Ellison wants to be the new Rupert Murdoch.
Yeah, I’m already done with Trek under the Ellison name.
I’ve cut off all these services already though, as an F U to the US threatening to annex my country, and virtually no Americans standing up against that.
Could be worse...you could have worked for Paramount.
Canadian or New Zealander?
Canada, I wasn’t aware he threatened NZ too.
There was a super interesting Money Stuff (Pay Now, Merge Later) recently about this kind of acquisition structure that allows the seller to keep the money even if the deal gets blown up by antitrust. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Stop letting companies consolidate.
Would you rather Larry Ellison own it? Because that was the front runner for the longest time.
As bad as this reality is, my first thought is at least it isn't going to Larry Ellison and Paramount. Coming from Zaslov, this seems like about the same level of terrible.
I think it's actually worse.
I don't see how this doesn't lead to the removal of the HBO brand from the marketplace, and the transfer of all IP, to Netflix's algorithm driven slop machine.
Both were shitty options, this is all speculation, but something tells me that at least HBO would have survived a Comcast or Paramount acquisition, and not been converted into whatever the hell you want to call Netflix's category of entertainment.
I only hope is that this is killed by regulators, and somehow Paramount and Comcast aren't able to put together new bids.
But, I don't think that's what's going to happen.
My feeling is, it's worse if we are one step closer to effective state-controlled media, but yes, all valid points
In terms of management of what content gets made? Yeah, probably about the same. A lot better than ellison where you can bet that stuff like The Pitt would have been instantly halted until they added enough scenes where the guy who beat up a nurse is shown to be the real hero and the southeast asian doctors all get deported before the shift ends.
But the zazlovian "if we cancel this we get more money than if we show it" nonsense will likely accelerate.
In terms of media quality? The best "joke" I have seen is that the new season of White Lotus is going to just be filmed on a green screen set. And... yeah. There are genuine arguments for and against that. Massively inflated budgets that more or less pay for vacations for the production team (Adam Sandler has entered the chat) are definitely bad. But there is a lot to be said about the kind of beautiful lighting and "energy" that comes from an on set. BUT you can also look at stuff like fucking How I Met Your Father that are kind of universally praised for using green screens to get iconic moments like conversations on bridges in NYC. I'll always prefer on location-ish filming but I totally get that that may be something that is a net negative these days.
The bigger problem on the Netflix side is what this means for theatres (and... I kind of honestly lean on the side of "fuck 'em" but understand they serve a purpose) and the price of streaming services in general. The best case scenario is increasingly looking like Netflix effectively becoming Cable where you have a base package and then pick what networks/studios you want on top of that. Which, to be fair, is what we already see with Disney and ESPN on Hulu or whatever. But... prices are going up regardless.
Also, it is still a bit murky as to exactly what is and isn't in this deal. My understanding is that WBD studios and productions are but the network channels aren't. So ellison is still likely to own CNN by 2027. But Netflix will likely be John Oliver's new Business Daddy (although I increasingly suspect LWT is planning to go independent).
And... as a wrestling sicko, things look real bleak. TNT/TBS will likely go to ellison. But AEW's streaming contract (not sure if it expires in that timeframe) is potentially going to be owned by Netflix who already do streaming for wwe/ufc. And... pretty sure the super horny super gay wrestling show where the World Men's Champion gets out and cuts a promo in high school Spanish while the coolest male tag team come out in "abolish ICE" clothing are going to get killed in favor of the promotion putting pyramid power on their turnbuckles and constantly making sure no black man can ever be successful under HH Helmseley.
It is REAL fucked that fucking Comcast was probably the best outcome for all this...
We already know what’s in the deal. Netflix is buying the Streaming and Studios company spun off in the split.
How in the ever living fuck does Netflix have the money to buy Warner Brothers? If anything you would think it would be the other way around.
Reminds me of the time AOL bought Time-Warner...
Dude. Market cap WBD $61b, NFLX $437b.
Remember when AOL bought Time-Warner?
Pepperidge Farm do.
Netflix has a market cap (valuation) of $421 billion, warner discovery is $64 billion now, but it was only ~$30 billion a couple months ago before rumours of a buyout started happening.
They both have the same revenue of $39 billion but Netflix runs at a $10 billion profit while warner runs at a $10 billion loss. That's why they're able to buy it, with warner the business is bad and they're burning money and need cash to keep them going but they're sitting on a gold mine of IP that would be valuable to another studio that's willing to cover their losses until they can turn things around.
It's more profitable to make low budget reality tv slop then risky high budget stuff that may not find an audience.
Debt! A massive amount of debt offloaded on to consumers with price hikes!
It’s sad when this is probably the best outcome if it goes through.
Best outcome would be after the deal is final people stop using Netflix.
Not enough people give a shit for that to ever happen. Hell, my wife (as much as I love her) doesn’t care. I’ve explained and shown her how much Netflix sucks but her desire to watch crappy Korean dubs without thinking too hard about how to do so takes precedence. Never mind my mother who is too old and stubborn to ever change.
But in the very least the subscription fees aren’t coming out of my account, and that’s really all I can do.
*Sad Larry Ellison noises*
I personally wanted Comcast to get it, only for the IP rights to be useful for their theme park division.
They should legally have to keep all their major mergers in their name. AOL-Time-Warner-Discovery-Netflix is far more representative of the nightmare times we live in.
Warner Bros-Seven Arts-Kinney-Time-AOL-AT&T-Discovery-Netflix
Enough buyouts and the parent can have creative acronyms.
All the conservatives complaining about LGBTQ+ being too long of an acronym start defending their ISP's being named AOLTERTLCDEFXYZẞ
Stop stealing jokes from Parks and Rec
Ah shit, now there's going to be a weird silent gap in the middle of the show because the joke was stolen!
Yeah, awesome! Super cool. Now Netflix will have more of my favourite content. Surely, they won't send it in a 720 slideshow then raise the prices by 1.5x because they have a greater monopoly, right? Right? Animaniacs!
Oh man, all that content I dont care about that will be merged with all that content I dont care about.
So here is an idea:
Ban companies from buying other companies.
Period
It always ends well for a very select few, it never ends well for the consumers
That's an interesting thought. Are mergers usually bad overall? Would it be better for the assets and workers to just be lost? I do think monopolies are bad simply because of the domination of control and the loss of competition, but if X and Y are two of many companies and Y is failing, why is it bad for X to save some of the parts of Y to incorporate it into their own? Maybe there should be limitations and regulations on how much can be done and to what?
I don't even know the right questions to ask, I just thought the idea was interesting in its absoluteness, and wondered if it might be too simple to say no merging or buying at all.
There should at minimum be a requirement for one company to prove it is failing, and for the other company to have to argue how the merger is a net benefit for competition in front of a judge
Hint: there rarely is a good reason
They do argue that it will be good for consumers, but they're almost always lying
Well shit. There goes my hopes of HBO eventually getting the rights to The Witcher and doing it right.
There goes my hope of hbo ever doing anything good anymore.
So what happens to DC Comics?
It becomes the sister company to… Millarworld
It's easier for the state to take over media if there's only one outlet.
Netflix will buy CNN next year.
Does this mean Netflix has to pay the president of the united states of america some grifter money?
The best way to download movies and shows is to get a VPN, I use airvpn. Install qbittorrent, enable the search function in settings. Update the search torrents, just click the update button. You can download just about anything. My Internet is very slow, especially for uploads but I wait for the share ratio to reach 3 before removing the torrent . This makes sure everybody gets a chance to download. I use alternative down&upload rates in the settings.
I use jelly fin to stream to all of my devices including TVs and tablets. We don't need Netflix
And the American media industry becomes a little bit weaker.
This makes me nervous about the Criterion Channel.
lol. They really do want everyone to bust out that pirate hat.
The subscription increases will continue forever at this rate with no competition.
Something interesting about this, that I observed from my office desk with the ever-present CNBC broadcast I am forced to endure:
CNBC is currently platforming a lot of opposing voices to this merger. A big part of the opposition I’ve witnessed them platform is a “THIS WILL KILL THE CINEMA INDUSTRY” narrative. This argument is ridiculous to me, as HBO Max is owned by Warner-Discovery, and if you recall, they pioneered the simultaneous cinema/streaming movie release.
Additionally, the Activision-Blizzard merger was larger in every way, and yet I cannot find any negative sentiment on behalf of CNBC with regard to that merger.
ActivisionBlizzard wasn't so much of a threat to ComcastNBCUniversal as NetflixWarnerDiscoveryHBO would be.