By Christopher O'Hare

As of late February, Paramount has seemingly won a big negotiation with Warner Bros Discovery against Netflix over who would merge with Warner Bros Discovery. With this merger, Paramount will acquire one of the biggest companies in the film industry, and could become a corporate giant.

Initially, Paramount offered $30 per share/ $101 billion for Warner Bros Discovery. At the time, a much bigger streaming service, Netflix, offered $27.75 a share/ 82.7 billion for Warner Bros Discovery’s films and assets. Despite being the higher bidder, Warner Bros Discovery rejected Paramount’s offer, citing concerns such as “an extraordinary amount of debt financing that creates risks to close and lack of protections for our shareholders if a transaction is not completed” on the Warner Bros website.

When asked why exactly he thinks Warner Bros Discovery was refusing Paramount’s deal, Ellis O’Leary, 705,  said “ Netflix is probably more successful in terms of successful shows or movies.”

For those who don’t know, shares are units of ownership in a company that investors can purchase.

Paramount’s hostile deal still worried Netflix, causing them to change their deal from being a mix of cash and stock, to being all cash, though it was still worth $27.75 per share, aka $82.7 billion.

There are many concerns that this Netflix/Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery merger would become a monopoly, with Elizabeth Warren, a senator in Massachusetts, posting on X that this deal looks like “an anti-monopoly nightmare.” and that “The Justice Department must enforce our nation’s anti-monopoly laws fairly and transparently — not use the Warner Bros. deal review to invite influence-peddling and bribery.” 

For those who don’t know, a monopoly is when a single company has total control over a certain market leaving little to no competition. While a merger of Paramount/Netflix and Warner Bros would still have some competition, it would certainly have an unreasonable amount of power and control in the film industry.

Archer Sylves, 604, added, “Whoever does buy Warner Bros will become a monopoly, because I know a lot of movies made by Warner Bros and I think a new one is coming out, so yeah I think a lot of people would want to watch that.”

In defense of a merger between Warner Bros Discovery and Netflix, Ted Sarandos, chief executive officer of Netflix, defended the merger in front of the US senate antitrust committee by saying the merger would "give consumers more content for less” and, according to BBC, said the merger would also create more American jobs.

In a surprising turn of events, after Paramount revised their offer to be worth $31 per share/$110 billion for the merger, Netflix backed out from the deal, and Warner Bros Discovery agreed to be acquired by Paramount. In an article posted on Netflix’s website, Netflix stated “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”

With this merger, Paramount will gain HBO Max, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, Warner Bros. Television Group, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, and Warner Bros. Games. With this merger, Paramount plans to combine HBO Max and Paramount+ to become one streaming service. According to the Los Angeles Times, despite cable channels becoming less popular amid streaming services, Paramount has no plans to sell any cable channels.

Of course, this merger isn’t all great for Paramount, who are now $79 billion in net debt because of the merger. This could lead to major cost cuts in certain areas such as CNN, which has lost over 40% of its audience since 2017.

Despite being in this amount of debt, Paramount’s purchase of one of the biggest studios in the film industry could lead them to becoming a monopoly and one of the biggest streaming services of all time.