The American television and cinema group Paramount Skydance will take over its competitor Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), valued at $110 billion including debt, it announced on Friday.

Published on: 02/28/2026 - 01:47 Modified on: 02/28/2026 - 10:26

This is the end of a long battle with Netflix. Paramount Skydance will take control of its rival Warner Bros Discovery (WBD), valued at $110 billion – including debt –, the group announced on Friday February 27. This outcome had become almost inevitable after the withdrawal on Thursday of Netflix, which gave up bidding on the latest offer made at the beginning of the week by Paramount Skydance.

The boss of WBD, David Zaslav, has carried out a great operation, the fight between contenders having allowed the Warner Bros Discovery share price to more than triple in less than a year. Paramount shares, for their part, jumped 20% on Friday on Wall Street.

Paramount Skydance was the first to submit a takeover proposal, in September, before others, Netflix in particular, joined the fight.

This marriage will unite two similar groups, each trying to break into streaming to compensate for the decline of its traditional television channels, while producing content through its studio.

Reorganization in Hollywood

This is a new stage in the consolidation underway in Hollywood, which corresponds to the weakening of the traditional economic model of studios and television.

In 2022, Discovery had already absorbed WarnerMedia to form WBD, under the leadership of the same David Zaslav, while in August 2025, Skydance swallowed Paramount Global.

Previously, Disney had acquired, in 2019, most of the assets of the Fox group, including the 21st Century Fox studio.

More anecdotally, because the group was much more modest in size, Amazon took control of the MGM studio in 2022.

Towards a merger of HBO Max and Paramount+

As part of the merger announced Friday, the Paramount studio brings “Mission: Impossible”, “Transformers” or “Top Gun”, as well as an imposing catalog of classics.

Warner Bros will put the “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” sagas in its hands, as well as the DC Universe superhero films (Batman and Superman in particular).

In addition to the studios, the streaming platforms HBO Max and Paramount+ will be found under the same roof, which respectively had 131.6 and 78.9 million subscribers at the end of 2025.

According to the Bloomberg agency, the boss of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison, plans to merge the two services to better position itself against Disney (174 million by adding Disney+ and Hulu) and Netflix (325).

The merged group will also have a large portfolio of channels, from CBS to CNN, including Discovery, Eurosport, Comedy Central and MTV.

Traditional television remains an important source of profits for both companies, but the emergence of streaming and the contraction of cable television in the United States is causing them to shrink more each quarter.

The acquisition must still be approved by shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting on March 20 and validated by regulators, in particular that of telecommunications, the FCC.

The epilogue of the Warner Bros Discovery saga marks the rise of David Ellison who, in just over 15 years, transformed a start-up, Skydance, into a media empire through debt and daring acquisitions.

This operation will require an atypical financial package and the personal support of Larry Ellison, founder of the Oracle group and father of the boss of Paramount Skydance, David Ellison.

Larry Ellisson, one of the world's richest men, is a longtime ally of President Donald Trump, who had indicated he would vote on the deal. Both Paramount and Netflix sought to curry favor with the White House, and ultimately it was Paramount that prevailed.

PSKY is thus preparing to swallow a company which weighs almost five times its own market capitalization and will have to, to do so, take on massive debt.

As for Netflix, far from feeling sorry for themselves, investors welcomed its renunciation, the action of the world number one in streaming gaining 13.75% on Friday's session alone. Many felt that the price offered by Paramount Skydance was too high.

"Netflix's withdrawal from the race will allow it to refocus on its business, while its closest competitors will struggle with lengthy regulatory approval and merger integration processes, which risk distracting them," commented Mohammed Khallouf, analyst at HSBC.

With AFP

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