On October 21st, 2025, Warner Brothers Discovery, the film and television company, officially put itself for sale with WBD CEO David Zaslav leading the selling process. While this may seem like a surprise to most that one of the biggest and oldest studios in Hollywood has decided to do this, especially with their recent successes such as F1: The Movie and Superman, there is a lot more going on beneath the surface.
WBD has had a significant debt issue since Warnermedia merged with Discover Inc, a television company with a focus on cable television, in 2022. Although it has gotten better, as of 2025 they are still 35 billion dollars in debt.
In 2022, AT&T, the original parent company of WarnerMedia, was in $158.2 billion in debt. To lower their debt, they decided to sell WarnerMedia to Discovery Inc. for 43 billion dollars, creating WBD.
Unfortunately for WBD, when Discovery Inc. acquired WarnerMedia, they assumed the debt WarnerMedia had accumulated under AT&T, starting the new company off with 55 billion dollars in debt.
After many cost cutting measures made by Zaslav, including film cancellations and job layoffs, the debt was supposed to be made manageable thanks to Discovery’s vast cable networks and TV shows.
However, due to the unexpected rise of streaming services after the Covid-19 pandemic ended, many consumers started canceling cable plans. This caused a significant shrinkage in WBD’s ad revenue and carriage fees and left the debt issue unresolved.
This shrinkage, coupled with the fact that their competitors are trillion dollar companies like Disney and Netflix who were interested in acquiring WBD, a sale was imminent.
Out of the many possible buyers WBD has, the two most likely ones are Paramount-Skydance and Netflix.
Paramount-Skydance, run by David Ellison, son of Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has made at least 3 bids on WBD so far, all of which have been rejected.
Despite their previous failures, Paramount still remains a strong contender due to the deep financial resources of the Ellison family and the fact that Paramount’s movie and tv library would be significantly advanced if they could acquire WBD.
If Paramount-Skydance were to acquire WBD, they would be in control of CNN News as well as CBS News, two of the largest news outlets in the USA.
This possibility has raised many concerns regarding media manipulation due to the Ellison’s hyper conservative political views and strong ties with Trump. People, primarily leftists and journalists, worry that this merger would be an opportunity for the Ellison’s to promote MAGA propaganda.
The other likely buyer, Netflix, run by Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, has been exploring the idea of bidding on WBD but has yet to make an official offer.
Being the biggest streaming company in the world, Netflix has notoriously been against movie theaters from day one. Netflix’s business needs to be able to stream movies instantly to make money, but major movie chains like AMC and Regal require a 90-day exclusive theatrical window. This makes movie theatres a significant obstacle to Netflix’s business and profitability.
If Netflix buys WBD, they would be absorbing one of the last movie-theatre focused companies in the USA and based on Sarandos’s statements and policies, it is highly speculated that Netflix would force WBD to conform to their anti-theater policies, potentially leading towards the complete death of movie theaters in the USA.
Gaining WBD would give its buyer complete control over all WBD assets such as Harry Potter and DC, granting them access to their entire library to use for streaming services, spinoffs, sequels, etc. This would give them a huge advantage over their competitors and have a lasting impact on the entire cinema industry.
