Fear After The Rose Ceremony

On December 4, 2025, Netflix announced plans that they would acquire the streaming and studios division of Warner Bros Discovery in a deal that is worth nearly US$80 billion. The rose ceremony that had the business world had been waiting for had been telecast for the world to see, and everybody involved decided that this courting game was finally over.

Of course, if you believe that, I have a skyscraper to sell you. I would have said bridge, but I'm not selling that quite yet.  Plus, I'm still giving it repairs. Hopefully those repairs will be completed by the summer, so wish me luck.

But yeah, apparently this courting game is not over just yet because the company that had felt it deserved that final rose despite being rebuffed many, many, many times is going all out and trying to tell not only Warner Bros Discovery but also the entire world that they're going to get them or nobody will. 

Ever.

I mentioned how the mountain wrecker known as David Ellison has had a kind of obsession with Warner Bros Discovery the moment that he "bought" Paramount Global with a chunk of his multibillionaire father Larry Ellison's money and started wrecking the venerated media company from the top-down months ago. 

I also mentioned how Ellison didn't know how to take "No" for an answer despite having at least three rejections from the WBD board to buy the company as well as publicly having a hissy fit that they're even having other companies trying to bid for them, as if WBD belongs to David Ellison and the company has no other choice.

Real stalker mentality.

Instead of walking away and admitting defeat, David Ellison decided to play the role of the scorned stalker, called his daddy, his daddy's friends (which includes the President of the United States), and foreign investors to help him beef up an supposedly larger bid of over US$100B to not only buy the Streaming and Studios side of Warner Bros Discovery but ALL of Warner Bros Discovery and officially made a hostile bid directly to the stockholders and the Board of Directors on Monday, December 8, 2025. 

Here is how the group leading the hostile bid look s:

• The Ellison family
• RedBird Capital 
• Affinity Partners, which is owned and founded by the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner, 
• Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund
• Abu Dhabi’s L’imad Holding Company PJSC
• The Qatar Investment Authority

Just when you thought it was over, a new cloud of worry scattered in the heads of the easily paranoid fandom who have already been scared of what Netflix's purchase of Warner Bros would have looked like.

And the near-overall consensus of this latest development?

"Maybe Netflix isn't as bad as we thought."

The Hollywood news media seem to be falling over on itself wanting the Ellisons to win WBD, but there's something I feel you need to know.

Over 60% of the hostile bid for WBD is comprised of foreign-backed funds from countries who have historically been enemies of the United States as well as committed and bankrolled terrorist acts on the country and its allies and killed anyone who they felt were bad actors. 

The entertainment news and business media have chosen to gloss over that fact for some odd reason.

But as All the President's Men, a brilliant Warner Bros film about political corruption that eventually led to the resignation of the President of the United States (based on a true story I wish could be repeated today if we had a competent press again), once suggested, follow the money.

If you follow the money behind these stories, you'll realize that the biggest entertainment news media company Penske Media, which owns the big three media news outlets [Deadline Hollywood, Variety, and The Hollywood Reporter] as well as Rolling Stone, Billboard, and VIBE, also has been funded by the Saudi Public Investment Fund in 2019 and the Saudi Research and Media Group in 2023,

Yes, the same PIF that is part of the funding behind the Ellison hostile offer.

You're not going to see any of the PMC sites acknowledge that minority stake in any coverage of this long story, which once again proves that you should support REAL independent media journalism untainted by foreign and political influences.

Even with all of that, David Ellison and Skydance are gaslighting everybody into thinking they're just merging Warner Bros Discovery into a small media company that only has a streaming platform.

David Ellison is gaslighting everybody into thinking that Netflix merging with Warner Bros is bad because it combines a pair of streamers. On CNBC, Ellison said, “Allowing the No. 1 streaming service to combine with the No. 3 streaming service is anticompetitive.”

First of all, Netflix isn't merging with the #3 streamer in the world. HBO Max isn't the #3 streaming service. Disney+ is. HBO Max is #4 at the most, if you count HBO proper.

Second, and this is me spitballing here, but wouldn't combining the #4 streamer (HBO Max) and the #5 streamer (Paramount+) also be anticompetitive?

Finally, wouldn't combining two movie studios, two television studios, two sports media groups, two news organizations, two pay-TV units & two children's and YA media brands ALSO be anticompetitive?

It's one thing to pretend that Netflix would kill HBO Max and limit competition if they were to merge while Paramount Skydance wouldn't do the same thing. 

Especially when Ellison literally admitted that he would shut down HBO Max and move everything to the lesser Paramount+ if he acquired the company.

It's another thing to present a position like this to the Board of Directors under the guise of "Building a Stronger Hollywood" that is essentially this:

when the truth of the deal Paramount Skydance is trying to do is actually this:

with the knowledge that everything on the left will completely be dissolved and thrown away and folded into everything on the right.

There will be no more Warner Bros Entertainment. The studio would be relegated to a name-only subunit of Paramount Skydance and disappear over time with the TV library folded into CBS Studios and the film library into Paramount Pictures.

There will be no more HBO. The pay-TV channel will be replaced by Showtime.

There will be no more Cartoon Network. All of its resources will be brought over to Nickelodeon.

There will be no more Adult Swim. Everything that Skydance likes from that block will shift over to MTV, which they're trying to rebuild into something new, and Comedy Central, which needs all the help they could get.

There won't be a New Line Cinema. Why would there be when they have Miramax? 

TNT Sports would be folded completely into CBS Sports.

I doubt Skydance would actually publish DC Comics.

CNN is already a dead channel walking, but CBS News would continue their transformation into a conservative news outlet with the addition of CNN to their control.

And yes, HBO Max would shut down in favor of Paramount+ worldwide.

So much for competition.

Oh, and 60% of it would be owned by foreign money funded by terroristic countries who are domestic enemies of much of the Western world, including the United States. 

Speaking of the Western world, another thing that keeps getting glossed over about this hostile bid from the Ellisons is how American-centric coverage of it when, truth be told, it'll be the bulk of the world that will determine what the makeup of the merged companies will actually look like. And here's the kicker. A lot of them aren't beholden to the whims of the American government nor openly support unfriendly foreign countries having ownership of the media. 

That's the thing about being an internationally based company. You have to deal with international trade groups to even operate, and they're very protective of their limited media access. I get the feeling Netflix would have an easier time getting trade approval than an Arab-based media transaction. And yes, once again, a majority of the Ellison bid is Arab-funded. That still means something to countries that aren't easily bribed and compromised. 

So, what's next? 

Who knows? At the time of this writing, it's still pretty likely that the Netflix-Warner Bros deal will go on as planned and the Board and stockholders won't be easily swayed by the seemingly unwanted advances of a sore loser and scorned suitor. Then again, money makes people do stupid things, and if the board does give in to these threats, the legacy of Warner Bros will die. 

I'm not sugarcoating it. The Ellisons will destroy everything that made Warner Bros Discovery worth something. They will remove all diverse voices, reject originality in favor of commercial conformity, and get rid of any "redundancies" including talent, staff, networks, and production units. 

This is the most anticompetitive choice among all of the would-be suitors, and if the WBD Board decides to accept David Ellison's threats, and this is something that I hate saying, then maybe Warner Bros Discovery deserves to die.

I hate this man and everything he represents.

I hate we have to deal with this arrogant, narcissistic, fascist nepo baby and his temper tantrums.

And I hate there's not a better option out there to secure the future of this great company. 

The story goes on, but I'm not sure I want to continue telling it if the Ellisons' threats are rewarded. I don't think I have it in me to do so.

I'm not a masochist, you know.