Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to take at least six months. That’s what WBD CEO David Zaslav shared with staff on Friday morning during a companywide town hall, according to multiple media reports.
“This all happened very quickly,” Zaslav reportedly said. The CEO also admitted that Paramount is emerging as the top bidder, saying it “feels a little whiplash-y” and that the company’s board of directors is still “getting our bearings.”
“If Warner Bros. is going to survive, then we needed to be bigger, and we needed to be global,” Zaslav said, according to Business Insider. He also added that “some of these companies are getting so big that they can just run us over.”
One major concern that was not addressed during the call was layoffs. Any time there’s a merger, questions loom about who will stay and who will be let go, and Paramount has already proven it is unafraid to make deep cuts. Skydance’s acquisition of Paramount last year led to roughly 2,000 layoffs, or about 10% of the company’s workforce. Insiders at WBD-owned CNN have already expressed concern about the future of their jobs. Meanwhile, CBS is bracing for its second round of layoffs under David Ellison.
The battle over Warner Bros. Discovery has been a long and bloody one. Paramount first made an offer to acquire the company in the fall of 2025, prompting WBD to publicly field additional bids from interested parties. Comcast and Starz both made offers for parts of WBD, but the real showdown was between Netflix and Paramount. From late December to February, it was widely assumed that Netflix would prevail after agreeing to buy WBD’s studio and HBO assets for $27.75 per share. That changed on Thursday.
Paramount’s winning offer came in at $31 a share, an increase that prompted Netflix to back out of the deal. The company also agreed to cover the $2.8 billion breakup fee owed to Netflix.
CNN’s Brian Stelter was the first to break the news.
