The long-running bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery is over after Paramount Skydance submitted an improved offer. On Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery said its board of directors has deemed Paramount Skydance’s latest offer of $31 per share to be a “superior proposal”. WBD gave Netflix four days to submit a counter offer, but the streaming giant effectively declined, raising its revised all-cash bid, deciding to walk away entirely.
“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” said Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters in a statement on Thursday. “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.”
Under the terms of the original agreement with Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery must pay a termination fee of $2.8 billion to Netflix for dissolving the agreement. Paramount Skydance’s latest offer of $31 per WBD share includes an agreement to cover the $2.8 billion fee. Despite not being able to close the deal, Netflix looks to be strengthening its war chest with almost $3 billion in the bank.
On Friday, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery officially announced the merger, and it is expected to close in Q3 2026. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory clearances and approval by WBD shareholders, with a vote expected in the early spring of 2026. “In the event the transaction has not closed by September 30, 2026, WBD shareholders will receive a $0.25 per share “ticking fee” for each quarter (measured daily) until closing,” Paramount announced in a press release.
Under the agreed $31 per share cash agreement, Paramount is acquring 100% of WBD, including the ticking fee, which brings WBD to a total value of $81 billion in equity and $110 billion in enterprise value. Paramount says it expects the acquisition to “yield over $6 billion in synergies, which are driven by a combination of: technology integration (such as migrating the combined company to a single enterprise resource planning system and consolidating streaming technology stacks), corporate-wide efficiencies, including procurement savings, optimizing the combined real estate footprint, and otherwise streamlining operational efficiencies.”
