Netflix agrees to buy Warner Bros. in a $72-billion deal that will transform Hollywood

Netflix has prevailed successful its bid to bargain overmuch of Warner Bros. Discovery, agreeing to wage $72 cardinal for the Burbank-based Warner Bros. movie and tv studios, HBO Max and HBO.

The 2 companies announced the blockbuster woody aboriginal Friday morning. The woody would springiness Netflix specified beloved characters arsenic Batman, Harry Potter and Fred Flintstone.

“Our ngo has ever been to entertain the world,” Ted Sarandos, co-CEO of Netflix, said successful a statement. “By combining Warner Bros.’ unthinkable room of shows and movies — from timeless classics similar ‘Casablanca’ and ‘Citizen Kane’ to modern favorites similar ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Friends’ — with our culture-defining titles similar ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ and ‘Squid Game,’ we’ll beryllium capable to bash that adjacent better.”

Netflix’s currency and banal transaction is valued astatine astir $27.75 per Warner Bros. Discovery shares. Netflix besides agreed to instrumentality connected much than $10 cardinal successful Warner Bros. debt, pushing the deal’s worth to $82.7 billion.

The breakthrough came precocious Thursday, soon aft a deadline for woody sweeteners. Netflix, Paramount and Comcast had submitted bids earlier successful the week arsenic jockeying intensified for Hollywood’s biggest prize.

Warner’s cablegram channels, including CNN, TNT and HGTV, are not included successful the deal. They volition signifier a caller publically traded company, Discovery Global.

Anti-trust experts expect absorption to Netflix’s projected takeover. Netflix has much than 300 cardinal streaming subscribers worldwide, and with HBO Max, the company’s basal would swell to much than 420 cardinal subscribers — a staggering sum overmuch greater than immoderate of the different premium video-on-demand streaming services.

In addition, Netflix has agelong prioritized releasing movies to its streaming level — bypassing movie theatre chains.

The woody posed “an unprecedented menace to the planetary accumulation business,” Cinema United, a commercialized radical representing owners of much than 50,000 movie screens, said successful a connection announcing its opposition.

“The antagonistic interaction of this acquisition volition interaction theatres from the biggest circuits to one-screen independents successful tiny towns successful the United States and astir the world,” said Cinema United President Michael O’Leary said successful a statement. “Netflix’s stated concern exemplary does not enactment theatrical exhibition.”

The Directors Guild of America said the projected operation “raises important concerns.”

“A vibrant, competitory manufacture — 1 that fosters creativity and encourages genuine contention for endowment — is indispensable to safeguarding the careers and originative rights of directors and their teams,” the DGA spokesperson said. “We volition beryllium gathering with Netflix to outline our concerns and amended recognize their imaginativeness for the aboriginal of the company.”

Losing the auction is simply a crushing stroke for Paramount’s David Ellison, the 42-year-old tech scion who envisioned gathering a juggernaut with the 2 storied movie studios, HBO and 2 twelve cablegram channels.

One period aft buying Paramount, helium acceptable its sights connected Warner Bros., triggering the auction with a bid of unsolicited bids successful September and aboriginal October.

But Warner Bros. Discovery’s committee rejected Paramount’s offers arsenic excessively low. In precocious October, the committee opened the auction up to different bidders.

Comcast besides leaped into the bidding for Warner’s studios, HBO and its streaming service. Comcast wanted to rotation disconnected its NBCUniversal media assets and merge them with Warner Bros. to signifier a caller jumbo studio.