Entertainment
The Company That Ruined Star Trek Has Plans To Ruin Batman Next
By Jennifer Asencio
| Published
The bidding war over Warner Bros. Discovery isn’t over yet. Thanks to a concession from Netflix, Star Trek’s parent company, Paramount Skydance, has reopened negotiations with Warner Bros. to acquire its extensive library. The seven-day window ends February 23, 2026, and the final vote will take place March 20.
Warner Bros includes Discovery Channel, HBO Max, CNN, and Cartoon Network, as well as Batman owners DC Comics and DC Studios. The DC Universe has especially faced backlash, with a controversial Superman that didn’t perform as hoped at the box office and a new Supergirl movie coming out in which everyone is rooting for Jason Momoa’s Lobo more than the titular heroine. The company has spent the last few years writing off properties for tax purposes, including famously shuttering a completed Batgirl movie.
Three Different Bidders Competing For Control Of WB
Paramount issued the first salvo in September 2025 when new CEO David Ellison made the first of many offers to David Zaslav of Warner Bros, which started at $19 per share. These offers increased through October until they became $23.50, 80% of which they offered in cash rather than other assets like stocks and real estate. On October 21, 2025, Warner Bros formally rejected Paramount’s offer and opened up talks for other bids.
Although Comcast was briefly involved in the bidding, the majority of the competition has been between Paramount and Netflix. Both companies offer significant libraries of content, and whichever of the two manages to snag Warner Bros would establish dominance over mainstream streaming. This would also reduce the market, because the only other major studio is Disney.
Another major player in the bidding war is Ancora Alternatives LLC, a small activist investor that owns shares in Warner Bros. and is holding out in favor of Paramount. On February 11, 2026, the firm announced that it would block the Netflix deal if due consideration were not given to Paramount offers, since existing deals with Netflix allow WBD to consider serious offers, and those made by Paramount qualified. Ancora’s protest prompted the reopening of negotiations by validating Paramount’s accusations of favoritism toward Netflix.
How To Buy An Entertainment Monopoly
Paramount also argued that a Netflix acquisition of the Warner Bros. studios would change the landscape of theatrical releases. Netflix has been notoriously unfriendly to movie theaters, preferring to release movies on its own platform; films like Knives Out theatrical releases were limited to mere weeks at the box office before Netflix hastened to make them exclusively streaming.
However, Paramount ownership presents its own problems. Despite years of corporate magic changing the names of the owners of both Paramount and Warner Brothers, both studios have been around for over a century and have long been rivals, as are their competing prestige cable channels, Showtime and HBO. A merger between the two giants would be suspiciously close to a monopoly.
If any offer is accepted from either company, the next step would be a review by governmental trade regulators around the world. All the companies involved have international reach and would be subject to the trade and monopoly laws of all the countries they hope to stream in. Even though nothing has been finalized about the purchase, various government regulators and watchdogs have been scrutinizing the situation and weighing its potential consequences.
Other various mergers and acquisitions have reorganized television and cable networks, dividing the spoils among streamers. Comcast owns NBC, Paramount owns CBS, and Disney owns both ABC and Fox Entertainment. As how we consume entertainment continues to change, the answer to whoever gets Warner Bros. Discovery will resound across the industry.