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Yes, was it Christmas yet? Netflix reported on Tuesday: “Warner Bros. is coming to Netflix.” A home visit for 83 billion euros. With Warner comes HBO and HBO Max, the DC universe (“Superman”, “Stranger Things”, “Wednesday”), “Harry Potter”, “Game Of Thrones” and “Friends”.
Paramount counters with 108 billion
But then Paramount came along with President David Ellison, a very rich man. His father is one of the richest men in the world, and Ellison Jr. invests your own money. Paramount also has a streaming service, a smaller one. Ellison wants to change that. Paramount offers 108 billion euros and addresses Warner shareholders directly.
Ellison is also gathering investors around him – sheikhs from Abu Dhabi and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s company – which is why Donald Trump announced he would take part in the negotiations. That should shock everyone, but not Netflix boss Ted Sarandos: He looks forward to the duel “calmly”. David Ellison, on the other hand, sees himself at an advantage because the merger of Netflix and Warner would mean a concentration of 43 percent of the streaming business in the USA. This could even cause antitrust problems there.
The legendary studio
“Nothing is changing today,” says Netflix’s email to subscribers. It’s a shame, because Warner Bros. is the legendary studio that was best known for gangster films with James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart in the 1930s. Michael Curtiz was the regular director of these effortlessly shot studio works.
In 1942, in a hangar in Hollywood, he made the most famous film of all time: “Casablanca”, the story of escape, espionage and emigration under the eyes of the Nazis – and the most bittersweet (lost) romance of all. Jack Warner ran the studio pragmatically for decades. When Warren Beatty tried to explain “Bonnie & Clyde” to him in 1967, Warner asked, “What is an homage?” An homage is when Netflix and Paramount try to buy the Warner Bros. conglomerate.