No one should be fighting for Warner Bros., but here we are, forced to pretend Paramount’s justified in pursuing an acquisition.
Ever since Disney got the green light to acquire Fox, every corporation’s decided it’d like to do the same thing. What was once a thing that frankly shouldn’t have happened and hasn’t tangibly benefitted anyone beyond letting folks say “[x IP] is awesome again!” and “Wolverine can fight the Hulk!” is now just an average part of our day as corps keep trying to out-acquire one another and turn themselves into empires.
Warner Bros. is the latest company under threat of acquisition, with Netflix and Paramount both trying to be the next owner of Batman and Game of Thrones. At first, it seemed Netflix would easily bring another addition to its (mostly) anti-theatrical stable, but Paramount (which merged with Skydance just last year) just won’t have it. Current CEO David Ellison has complained, cried foul, and more recently filed a lawsuit as a means of blocking the deal WB’s shareholders already approved. At time of writing, a judge ruled that the Transformers studio hasn’t “identified [or suffered] any cognizable, irreparable harm” from the deal to come and therefore can’t fast track said suit as WB continues finalizing its deal with Netflix. He’s not giving up, though, as he’s now looking to rally European support to continue his efforts.
For those not keeping track at home, Ellison’s tried at least a dozen times now (again, at the time of writing) to convince Warner Bros.
