"Over the last decade alone, the Warner Bros. Curse has shown itself at least twice. In 2018, after a two-year regulatory battle, AT&T acquired what was then called Time Warner for $85.4 billion, and renamed the company WarnerMedia. Many believed AT&T overpaid for the company, and the stock market never seemed to really love this deal. WarnerMedia struggled to find big profits in streaming, its movie business was devastated by the pandemic, and the companies' cultures never really jibed with each other."
"And so in a deal that represented tens of billions of dollars in losses for its shareholders AT&T sold shares and ceded control of WarnerMedia to Discovery Inc. The two officially merged in 2022, forming Warner Bros. Discovery, which is still this Frankenstein of a company's name (Frankenstein is another Warner Bros. property). Since then, the company has made a series of bizarre decisions, like rebranding its streaming service HBO as HBO Max and then Max and then back to HBO Max."
Netflix and Paramount are competing to acquire Warner Bros. Warner Bros. has experienced multiple troubled corporate transactions and strategic missteps that produced financial losses and operational turmoil. In 2018 AT&T bought Time Warner for $85.4 billion and renamed it WarnerMedia, a deal widely seen as overpriced. WarnerMedia struggled with streaming profitability, suffered pandemic-related movie losses, and clashed culturally with AT&T. AT&T sold shares and ceded control to Discovery; the companies merged in 2022 as Warner Bros. Discovery. The company then executed inconsistent streaming rebrands, shelved BatGirl after spending nearly $90 million, and mishandled a Mad Men remaster.
Read at www.npr.org
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