How expensive? Deadline is now reporting that Paramount’s $31 per share purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery is being priced out at a cool $111 billion. $47 billion of the cash in question will arrive in equity commitments (i.e., promises to have the actual money on hand when the bill comes due) that are being combined between the Ellison family fortune and an investment group called RedBird Capital Partners, with some other financing possibly lurking in the background, as shadowy money in the business world is wont to do. Another $54 billion, though, will come in the form of what in the business world is referred to as “debt financing from multiple major banks,” but which, if any of us tried to do it, would be described as “Being on the hook for loans the collective size of the gross national income of Fiji.” If that sounds like a lot of debt to you, good news: It is! To the point that there are already some pretty hefty industry concerns about what this new behemoth will actually be able to do if and when the deal goes through, without being hamstrung by its new creditors.
Don’t worry, though: Ellison has promised that he’s already identified $6 billion in “cost synergies” between the two companies, the sort of deliberately innocuous business phrasing that sends chills down the spines of corporate employees everywhere. Some of those cuts will come in the form of practicalities, like figuring out whether it’s worth continuing to own the real estate on two distinct movie studios. (For what it’s worth, Paramount has pledged to keep up film output with both its own slate of projects as well as WBD’s, pledging to put 15 movies apiece into theaters each year. The company is also trying to get out ahead of some of the optics that had Netflix fending off attacks from a rabid James Cameron by stating it’ll maintain a commitment to a 45-day theatrical window for its films.)
But some of that cost-cutting is obviously going to come from laying off what sounds like a staggering number of employees, as Ellison attempts to smoosh two fully functioning movie studios together. (One of which, we can’t help but note, is coming off of a pretty banger 2025; it’s wild to imagine that the reward for getting unlikely box office successes like Sinners and One Battle After Another in front of audiences might now be unceremoniously losing your job in a dark sacrifice to the business gods.)
All of this is still up in the air, obviously, with the current timeline having the deal expected to close in the fall of 2026. (Pending Ellison’s buddies in the White House continuing to play nice, and state regulators being unable to make anything actionable out of threats to give the deal a “vigorous” review.) Paramount’s holding a conference call on Monday to disseminate more information about the deal—but it’s all sounding like it’ll carry all of the messiness that arrived the last two times Warner Bros. got merged over the last decade, the scars from which are apparently still stinging for many long-time employees. Weirdly, the only actual winner in all this might end up being Netflix, which got to walk away with more than $2 billion in break-up fees—paid by Paramount—for the privilege of now not having to figure out how to incorporate a whole other massive company into its streaming ecosystem.