Paramount's merger with Skydance and its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery

The fight for Warner Bros. Discovery followed. Within weeks, Paramount Skydance was preparing a bid for the company.^[11] In December, Warner instead agreed to sell its studio and HBO Max streaming service to Netflix for $82.7 billion.^[12] Paramount answered with a hostile $30-a-share, all-cash offer for all of Warner, taken directly to shareholders,^[13] and later added a personal guarantee of $40.4 billion from Larry Ellison, David Ellison's father and the founder of Oracle.^[14] In February 2026, Netflix declined to match Paramount's raised offer and walked away, leaving Paramount poised to acquire all of Warner, including CNN.^[3]

Warner shareholders approved the $81 billion takeover in April,^[4] and in June the Justice Department closed its antitrust review, concluding that the deal was not likely to harm competition.^[15] In July, California and 11 other states sued to block it, and the Writers Guild of America filed its own challenge.^[5] A federal judge then issued a temporary restraining order halting the deal.^[16] In September, the states and the writers agreed to settle, with new commitments from Paramount,^[17] and on September 30 the judge approved the settlement, allowing the merger to close as soon as the following week.^[6]

The takeover closed on October 6, bringing two of Hollywood's legacy film studios into one company named Skydance.^[7][18] Mark Thompson stayed on as CNN's chairman,^[19] and Warner's departing chief executive, David Zaslav, received about $606 million for his shares and stock options.^[18] Shares of the new company fell in its first days of trading,^[20] and they dropped as much as 25% after the company issued some 471 million stock warrants to former Paramount shareholders.^[21]

In November, the company replaced James Gunn and Peter Safran as heads of DC Studios with the Marvel veteran Jeremy Latcham,^[22][23] and said it would begin selling HBO Max and Paramount+ together in a bundle early in 2027, a first step toward combining the services.^[24]