Warner Bros. CEO David Zaslav met with Paramount CEO Bob Bakish on Tuesday in New York City to discuss a possible merger, Axios is reporting.
In the meeting, said to have lasted a few hours, Zaslav and Bakish spoke about an assortment of issues including merging each company's main streaming service — Paramount+ and Max — to better rival Netflix and Disney+. WBD is said to have hired bankers to explore the deal.
WBD's market value was around $29 billion as of Wednesday, while Paramount's was just over $10 billion, so any merger would not be of equals.
That’s a combined $39 million in assets. This is a big deal. On the news front, CNN and CBS News are said to also merge if a deal gets made. The landscape, not just movie-wise, would be very different with this merger. Zaslav ain’t messing around.
Axios adds that talks between WBD and Paramount are still in the early stages, and a deal isn’t a foregone conclusion, but that neither company wants to remain in the sidelines for too long. An acceleration in talks is most likely to occur.
How is this allowed?
Well, this would basically be the Disney and Fox deal all over again, except WBD would want to stay in control and merge all of the Paramount assets. I’m not privy to all of the details here, so there might be some bumps on the road for Zaslav to get this deal done, but, if successful, it would be a major, shapeshifting moment for the industry.
Paramount has been struggling. For example, they have no big Christmas or Oscar movies, other than “Killers of the Flower Moon,” which is really from Apple Studios. What Paramount does have is a behemoth television library, and that is surely another big lure for Zaslav.
This won’t be the last of these crazy mergers. Apple has long been rumored to buy NBC Universal from Comcast.
The ‘Smile’ franchise has a new director. David Bruckner, who made “The Night House” and the 2022 “Hellraiser” reboot, has been hired to direct “Smile 3” for Paramount.