Warner Bros. Studios and Paramount ready to merge?

Their bosses, David Zaslav and Bob Bakish, met this week.

Axios reported last night on discussions between David Zaslav and Bob Bakish, the respective bosses of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount, about a potential merger between the two studios. The source says straight away that it is only a question of “very first exchanges” on this subject, and therefore nothing has been signed yet, but this is obviously causing a reaction in Hollywood.

Because in the face of enormous competition from Disney, which recently bought 21st Century Fox and Hulu, from Netflix or Amazon, a marriage between these two historic firms in the entertainment industry would be a big coup.

Warner thus holds the rights to enormous film and television franchises, such as Harry Potteradaptations of DC comics (Batman, Superman…) or even the Looney Tunes And barbiethe biggest cinematic success of the year, while Paramount has those of Mission: Impossible, Star Trek, Transformers Or Spongebob. Both have a streaming service: Max has 95 million subscribers worldwide and Paramount 63 million, compared to nearly 250 for Netflix and 105 million for Disney+. By merging, their new entity would be a strong competitor in Hollywood. Not to mention that Warner has already partnered with HBO, and that Paramount is a partner of very popular American TV channels, such as CBS, which is a hit in particular thanks to sport, MTV, Nickelodeon and Comedy Central.

All of this now remains to be confirmed, but if Warner and Paramount merge in 2024, it will mark the third significant change of direction for the first studio in just five years: AT&T, which has run it since 2019, had already sold its rights to Discovery to form Warner Bros Discovery in May 2021. Since his arrival at the helm, David Zaslav has caused a lot of ink to flow by multiplying shocking decisions, such as the cancellation of Batgirla blockbuster filmed for around 90 million dollars which will ultimately be released neither in cinemas nor in streaming.

Moreover, a few months ago, rumors of a merger had already circulated, but between Warner and Universalthis time.

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