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Warner Bros. Discovery Endgame Involves Flip to Comcast, NBCUniversal?

Published Fri, 16 Sep 2022 09:43:13 -0500

As October quickly approaches, we're inching closer to the two-month "anniversary" of Warner Bros. Discovery head David Zaslav making his intentions known during an eagerly-awaited investors' call (and not long after he and WBD received serious backlash for shelving Batgirl indefinitely for apparent tax write-off reasons). He saw the global brand importance of DCU characters like Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman, so he was going to assemble a set-up similar to what Disney has with Marvel Studios and Kevin Feige. Basically, it would be one person running plays on behalf of the DCEU across all media who would answer directly to Zaslav. Since that time? Eh… things are balancing between "status quo" and 'not so good," with Dan Lin rumored to be zeroing in on the position before negotiations fell apart over what to do with Lin's production company. Now, thanks to another great edition of "Heat Vision," Kim Masters puts out there for public consumption another twist in this entire thing that not many have been discussing outside of hallways and conference rooms. What if all of this is just another stage in a very different endgame, one that would see Comcast stepping in to combine Warner Bros. Discovery with NBCUniversal (which Comcast owns)?

Considering WBD's financial and structural challenges, a "final" flip isn't proving to be too shocking to those behind the scenes, even though a mess load of contractual & merger-based factors preclude any negotiations until April 2024 at the earliest. And while Masters notes that such a move would be met with "some interesting antitrust issues," the benefits it would bring to Comcast would be too much to resist. "There are some good synergies. I'm sure [Roberts] is licking his chops because the [WBD] stock is so low. And I think that's Zaslav's endgame. Get the place sold," one source was quoted in the article. For their part, a spokesperson for the WBD issued the following statement: "We are building Warner Bros. Discovery for the long term." Though, when it comes to one person's definition of "the long term" compared to another's, let's just say that mileage may vary. "People feel like it's Comcast for sure," said the head of one company, quoted in the article. "It's going to be so depressing to lose another major studio [after Disney bought Fox]. And Warners was the Tiffany studio."

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