Warner Bros. soon to be bought by Universal?

Variety mentions a deal within two years to take over the studio, during an article on Aquaman 2 and the future of the DCU.

Variety devotes a long article to the complicated production ofAquaman 2, by James Wan. The Hollywood magazine, often very well informed, evokes significant tensions between the main actor, Jason Momoa, and his playing partner Amber Heard, who was in the middle of a highly publicized conflict against her ex Johnny Depp when she was again cast in the role of Mera. The interpreter of Arthur Curry would have wanted her to be fired from the project so much that he would have arrived on the set drunk and dressed like Jack Sparrow, one of the most famous roles of her ex-husband. Atmosphere…

Warner Bros denies this, but other examples leave little room for doubt: the studio is reportedly struggling to promote this latest DCU film, imagined in particular by Zack Snyder, while the end of this franchise has already been announced. A year ago, James Gunn and Peter Safran were hired to rethinking it from A to Z, over a decade, with new films based on popular comics such as Superman. In this context, The Lost Kingdom, scheduled for December at the cinema, will be shown to an audience who knows full well that the story of Aquaman played by Jason Momoa will end there. If the actor returns to the DCU, it will be in another role, perhaps Lobo.

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In addition to confirming that Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Henry Cavill (Superman) or Ben Affleck (Batman), the stars of the Snyder-verse, will not no longer part of this big film franchise, the magazine focuses for a moment on the overall situation of the firm, whose decisions of the new boss, David Zaslav, regularly cause scandal. So much so that there would already be talk of a takeover, even though he has only been in charge since 2021.

Variety writes precisely that “behind-the-scenes specialists are convinced that another company, probably Universal, will buy Warner Bros. within two years, which means that the recent twists and turns at DC will have been useless.” If a takeover is confirmed between today and 2025, it will be the third in seven years, since the company specializing in telephony had already paid 85 million dollars to run TimeWarner in 2018. After three years at the helm, the studio was sold to Discovery, and David Zaslav has since led the company which he renamed Warner Bros. Discovery.

His leadership has made a lot of noise, especially since he canceled all broadcasts of Batgirl, a previously filmed superhero film with an estimated budget of $90 million. In total, it deleted 2 billion films and series, invisible in cinemas or on the Max platform (formerly HBO Max).

His shocking decisions also concern the adaptations of DC comics on the big screen, which fail to be as successful as their competitors from Marvel. Regarding a potential takeover of Warner, a Wall Street analyst, Rich Greenfield, explains to Variety : “At the end of the day, they need DC to work, it doesn’t matter if it’s Zaslav in charge or Brian Roberts (at the head of Comcast and therefore of Universal, editor’s note) or another boss.”

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Since the global Covid epidemic, the situation has changed in the field of streaming, and merging two studios together could give more weight to one platform. Concretely, if a deal is signed between NBC Universal and Warner Bros, this could mean that the services of the two studios, Peacock and Max, could see their catalogs mixed to offer subscribers a greater offer. On their own, they are struggling to attract spectators in numbers, facing huge competitors such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney+.

Taking the example of Disney’s takeover of 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros would therefore be in the sights of Universal, but also of other firms such as Paramount or Apple. Note that a few months ago, another rumor indicated that Universal would be negotiating a takeover of Disney. Its boss, Bob Iger, immediately reacted by saying that the big-eared company was not for sale. Same these days with David Zaslav, who swears he didn’t put Warner Bros. up for sale. Discovery.

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