Netflix To Acquire Warner Bros. Studio And Streaming Business For $72 Billion
Netflix has struck a deal with Warner Bros. Discovery to buy the legacy Hollywood giant’s studio and streaming business for $72 billion.
The acquisition, announced Friday, would bring two of the industry’s biggest players in film and TV under one roof. Beyond its namesake film and television division, Warner owns HBO Max and DC Studios. Netflix, meanwhile, has become a dominant household name in on-demand content while building its own production arm behind hits like “Stranger Things” and “Squid Game.”
The cash-and-stock deal is valued at $27.75 per Warner share, giving the company an enterprise value of roughly $82.7 billion. The transaction is expected to close after Warner separates its Discovery Global cable operations into a newly traded public company in the third quarter of 2026.
Shares of Warner Bros. rose nearly 3% in premarket trading, while Netflix and Paramount fell more than 2%.
Gaining Warner’s legacy studios would mark a shift for Netflix’s current theatrical strategy. Under the agreement, Netflix has pledged to continue theatrical releases for Warner’s studio films, honoring Warner’s existing contracts for movie rollouts.
Netflix has historically kept most of its original content exclusively on its digital platform, with limited theatrical exceptions such as “KPop Demon Hunters” and the upcoming “Stranger Things” series finale.
As recently as October, when Warner signaled it was open to a potential sale, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos insisted the company had “no interest in owning legacy media networks,” though he didn’t completely rule out a bid. “We believe that we can be and we will be choosy,” Sarandos said at the time.
Friday’s announcement follows a lengthy bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery. Interest from Netflix and Comcast surfaced early in the fall. Skydance-owned Paramount, which completed its own $8 billion merger in August, also made several all-cash offers heavily backed by CEO David Ellison’s family. Paramount was reportedly the frontrunner for a period and was the only bidder seeking to acquire Warner’s entire operation, including its cable networks such as CNN and Discovery.
