Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday confirmed it had received a revised offer from Paramount to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, its latest effort to woo the entertainment giant away from a deal with Netflix.
“We are reviewing in consultation with our financial and legal advisors,” a spokesperson for Warner Bros. Discovery said, without providing details about the revised offer. “We will update our shareholders following the board’s review.”
Warner Bros. Discovery announced a deal in December to sell a large portion of its business to Netflix for $83 billion, spurning an offer from Paramount Skydance to acquire the whole company for $108 billion. Paramount subsequently took its pitch to shareholders and made tweaks to its offer but had not raised the price, which valued Warner Bros. Discovery at $30 a share.
Last week, Warner Bros. Discovery reopened talks with Paramount, giving it until the end of Monday to come up with its best and final offer. Netflix now has four days to counter Paramount’s revised bid.
But the scant disclosure about the details of Paramount’s bid, particularly the price it is offering, is unlikely to immediately quell shareholders’ questions.
The Warner Bros. Discovery spokesperson said Tuesday its board continues to recommend its deal with Netflix.
Even before raising its offer, Paramount repeatedly said its deal was better financially and more likely to secure regulatory approval. Some Warner Bros. Discovery investors have openly encouraged the company to talk with Paramount.
Netflix has insisted that its deal is already done and steadily marching toward a March vote by Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders to officially approve the transaction. Antitrust experts have raised questions about both deals.
Amid the corporate jostling, politics have loomed large, particularly given Warner Bros. Discovery’s ownership of CNN and President Trump’s past interest in media deals. While Mr. Trump has waffled publicly over whether he would weigh in on an antitrust review of the deal by the Justice Department, he has met with the chief executives of both Paramount and Netflix in recent months. On Saturday, he called on Netflix to oust Susan Rice, who held high-ranking positions in Democratic presidential administrations, from its board.
“He likes to do a lot of things on social media,” Netflix’s co-chief executive Ted Sarandos told the BBC’s “Today” program on Monday when asked about Mr. Trump’s post. “This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal. This deal is run by the Department of Justice in the U.S. and regulators throughout Europe and around the world.”
Still, the timing of Mr. Trump’s comment before the deadline for Paramount’s bid made some on Wall Street wonder whether the president was trying to indicate his preferred bidder.
The billionaire Larry Ellison, the father of David Ellison, the chief executive of Paramount, is friendly with Mr. Trump and financially backing his son’s attempted acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. Last year, Paramount settled a $16 million lawsuit with Mr. Trump as it was waiting for regulatory approval for its sale to David Ellison’s Skydance.
Netflix defended its deal before Congress this month. During the hearing, some Republican senators criticized Netflix, which is led by Mr. Sarandos and Greg Peters, accusing it of political bias and “woke content.” Lawmakers from both parties questioned Netflix about the possible anticompetitive nature of a tie-up with Warner Bros.
Hollywood insiders have also weighed in: The director James Cameron wrote a letter to Senator Mike Lee, the Utah Republican who leads the subcommittee on antitrust, decrying the impact of a Netflix deal on Hollywood. The actor Mark Ruffalo questioned whether Mr. Cameron was “also against the monopolization that a Paramount acquisition would create.”
As part of its review of the deal, the Justice Department has been asking Netflix’s rivals about whether its deal with Warner Bros. Discovery could create a monopoly. In a statement on Monday, Netflix’s chief legal officer, David Hyman, said the company “operates in an extremely competitive market,” adding that “we’ll gladly cooperate, as we always do, with regulators on any concerns they may have.
Lauren Hirsch is a Times reporter who covers deals and dealmakers in Wall Street and Washington.
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