WARNER BROS. BID HEATS UP AS CONTEST SHRINKS

NETFLIX’S move, announced on December 5, to acquire Warner Bros.

- GURBIR SINGH

Discovery (WBD) for a gargantuan $83 billion, and the counter hostile bid by Paramount for $108 billion has roiled Hollywood and the corporate entertainment world.It signals the tight monopoly of the Big entertainment players — Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros., Sony Pictures and Comcast, has got even tighter; and that its now all down to streaming, and the days of the ‘Big Screen’ are close to the end.

Through the acquisition, Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the streaming giant hoped to acquire a film and series content library historically stretching nearly a century from super hits like Citizen Kane and Casablanca to the more recent Harry Potter and Friends.

Paramount, which lost its bid to Netflix, however has decided it will not give up without a fight. It has made a hostile bid of about $108 billion, but the WBD board expressed doubts whether it was guaranteed real money. By December 17, the board officially rejected the Paramount offer citing an ‘opaque’ financial structure. This included several iffy Middle East investors backing the bid, and Paramount's controlling family — the Ellisons — not personally committing sufficient funds.

In response, by December 22, tech titan and chief of Oracle, Larry Ellison, also the father of the Paramount CEO David Ellison, personally guaranteed $40.4 billion in equity needed for Paramount’s proposed takeover of Warner Bros. The revised December 22 offer however has not changed the bid offer of $30 a share or a total valuation of $108 billion.