Paramount, Comcast and Netflix Make Official Bids for Warner Bros. Discovery as High-Stakes Fight for the Company Begins
The first round bids were non-binding, with things likely to evolve over the coming weeks. It was not immediately clear if Saudi Arabia or other Middle Eastern funds were involved in any bid.
David Ellison is really flexing his financial muscle in Hollywood and it seems he will get WB as well. The rumors about his $71 billion bid being backed by the middle Eastern Sovereign funds is still hanging over him, but I don't think Netflix and Comcast can get anywhere near the amount he can raise.
Besides, WB shareholders will take whatever they can get at this moment. Netflix only wants the studios, and while Comcast can handle the cable networks, they would rather ship them off to Versant, so neither of the two seems like a reliable buyer for everything that WB is selling. The Paramount Skydance deal might not have the appeal of paying top dollar for the studios, but it is still very lucrative and it basically allows the shareholders to offload those pesky cable channels which are dragging the whole sale behind at this point.