Yesterday, the entertainment industry was shocked by the news that Warner Bros. Discovery had been in talks with Paramount about a potential merger, which would turn two giant media companies into one giant media company, all under the terrifying watchful eye of WBD boss David Zaslav. The initial reaction, outside of hardcore IP fans who lost their minds at the idea of a WB character like Batman being friends with a Paramount character like Spock, was trepidation. Zaslav’s run at Warner Bros. Discovery hasn’t exactly been positive, given his obvious penchant for hitting the delete button on completed shows and movies, so potentially giving him access to the SpongeBob delete button and the Mission: Impossible delete button was a terrifying prospect.
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But according to a report from The New York Times, there may be more to this potential deal than meets the eye (the Transformers movies are also owned by Paramount), and there may only be one person in the whole world who thinks it’s a good idea: David Zaslav himself. Apparently, investors aren’t particularly thrilled about the prospect, with both WBD and Paramount stock dipping yesterday, with one of the reasons being that this merged company would be “heavily reliant on declining TV channels.”
Also, we noted yesterday that Paramount is under a lot of debt ($15 billion), and while WBD does at least make money somehow, it is also in a ton of debut ($40 billion), which means a combined company would have several shitloads of debt to deal with and very little incoming cash to help deal with it. That means Zaslav would want to cut costs, which would inevitably lead to him destroying more iconic Warner brands and/or killing off more movies and TV shows the way he killed Batgirl.
Regular people are wary of it and investors don’t like it, but they’re not alone: The government would also likely be suspicious of a deal thanks to harsher new restrictions against this kind of gigantic merger and a tax rule that could hit WBD with huge penalties if it starts talking about mergers so soon after the last one. So why does Zaslav think this is a good idea if everyone else think it’s terrible? Is it because he’s a secret genius?
Actually, The New York Times says that some insiders suspect that these talks between Paramount and WBD are all a big show and that they were leaked to the press on purpose (you’ll notice that, after Axios first reported on the talks, Variety, Deadline, and The Hollywood Reporter were all able to separately confirm it was true through their own sources). The theory is that Zaslav wanted to bait NBCUniversal into making its own offer to merge with WBD, which would apparently be a better deal for Zaslav since NBCUniversal and parent company Comcast are sitting on more cash than Paramount.
That would mean David Zaslav is playing all of us, making the world dance to his little tune while he sets his sights on the real prize: Taking over 30 Rockefeller Plaza so he can gut it, leave it empty, and then somehow make money off it as a tax write-off.