Warner Brothers Discovery (WBD), the parent company of CNN, is considering re-opening sales talks to look at a bid from Paramount Skydance, according to Bloomberg.
Paramount is owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, who remains a close ally of President Donald Trump. The move follows months of a nearly unrelenting campaign by Paramount to make headway with WBD despite the latter company accepting a bid from Netflix.
Now, the pressure appears to have paid off, as members of WBD’s board have started discussing whether Paramount could offer a superior deal, although the board may stick with its current deal, Bloomberg reported, citing individuals with knowledge on the matter.
Newsweek reached out to Warner Brothers Discovery by email on Sunday evening for comment.
Why It Matters
Netflix successfully negotiated a deal for Warner Brothers and its entertainment assets after WBD announced it was interested in divesting its TV and film studios. Netflix ended up agreeing to pay $83 billion for those assets, beating out David Ellison’s Paramount.
WBD boasts an incredibly lucrative and successful library of properties, including Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and the DC Comics universe.
What To Know
Paramount has not given up on trying to make a deal happen, and has pursued a number of options, including a lawsuit against WBD in order to acquire more information about the Netflix offer, which is understood to be a cash-and-stock deal.
However, the Paramount offer is understood to be an all-cash offer for $108.4 billion, which would aim to acquire all properties under the Warner Brothers umbrella, including CNN – adding a second news network to the Ellison family catalogue, which currently includes CBS.
Paramount recently stepped up its offer, which now includes offering shareholders extra cash for each quarter the deal fails to close after this year, and also a pledge to cover the breakup fee for WBD, which would go into effect since the Netflix deal already has started paperwork and other parts of the sale process.
However, the Paramount effort to acquire WBD has raised concerns due to the specific goal of acquiring CNN – something Trump has highlighted as a necessity should the deal take place, but which has therefore alarmed critics of the president, who worry that he is eliminating dissenting voices in the media by backing his allies to buy parent companies.
CBS has undergone a significant transformation since David Ellison’s acquisition, with an extensive round of layoffs and appointing Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of CBS News. Her tenure has already stumbled over controversy after she withheld a report that covered the supermax CECOT prison in El Salvador where the U.S. has deported Venezuelans and other nationals as part of the mass deportation operation.
Trump has had a long-running dislike for CNN stemming from what he believes is a strong bias against him and his supporters, which he frequently labels as “fake news.”
In remarks to reporters at the White House in December, Trump declared that “CNN should be sold,” suggesting it was “imperative” the network be part of whatever deal WBD ultimately makes.
Trump called CNN’s current leadership “either corrupt or incompetent,” saying he did not think they “should be allowed to continue” running the network because “CNN is [being run by] a very dishonest group of people.”
What People Are Saying
Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts on X in December 2025: “Trump has been trying to muzzle CNN for years. Surprise, surprise: Paramount’s bid for Warner Bros. includes control over CNN—and is backed by Jared Kushner’s private equity firm and billions from Saudi Arabia. This reeks of corruption in service of squashing free speech.”
Republican Senator Mike Lee of Utah on X in December 2025: “Learning about Netflix’s ambition to buy its real competitive threat—WBD’s streaming business—should send alarm to antitrust enforcers around the world. This potential transaction, if it were to materialize, would raise serious competition questions—perhaps more so than any transaction I’ve seen in about a decade. When Netflix has real competition, viewers and artists win. Netflix built a great service, but increasing Netflix’s dominance this way would mean the end of the Golden Age of streaming for content creators and consumers.”
