The Pending Disaster of a Skydance-Warners Merger

"This fall, the would-be movie mogul career of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav took one step forward, and it now threatens to take one large, disastrous step backward, off a cliff. For movie fans, that step forward meant WBD releasing Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, a delirious political fever dream combining modern-day immigration and MAGA politics with bravura filmmaking. That step off the cliff? In late October, Zaslav announced that, after three increasingly aggressive offers from David Ellison's Skydance, WBD is up for sale."

"Zaslav oversees a massive conglomerate that came together in 2022 when Warner Media (the offspring of the unwieldy 2018 merger between AT&T and Time Warner) merged with Discovery Inc. to become WBD. The fact that a "W" for Warner always figures prominently in any incarnation of these properties gives you a sense of the history of the Warner Bros. brand and what's it's meant to the American public since 1923."

David Zaslav announced Warner Bros. Discovery is up for sale after multiple offers from David Ellison's Skydance, creating the prospect of a bidding war or internal breakup for more than $70 billion. Skydance recently acquired Viacom and CBS and made controversial programming and personnel moves, including canceling Stephen Colbert and hiring Bari Weiss to oversee CBS News. WBD formed from the 2022 merger of Warner Media and Discovery Inc. and includes CNN, HBO, Turner Classic Movies, DC Studios, TNT Sports, Animal Planet, and many other brands. Potential ownership changes threaten news values and film and television production.

Read at The Nation