Summary
- Netflix buys Warner Bros for $82.7B, adding Game of Thrones, DC, The Big Bang Theory, and The Wizard of Oz.
- Deal closes after Warner Bros and Discovery split; spin-off to be public in Q3 2026.
- Netflix says the buy will boost its offerings and draw in fans with its new collection of shows and movies.
It feels like no business is too big to get bought these days. In the gaming scene, the world was shocked when Microsoft bought up the games giant Activision Blizzard, bringing titles such as Call of Duty and World of Warcraft into the Xbox fold. Now, the world of entertainment has learned yet again that there's always a bigger fish, as the streaming service Netflix has just bought up Warner Bros for a cool $82.7 billion.
Netflix to acquire Warner Bros in a huge $82.7 billion deal
As announced on the official Netflix news feed, the company has bought up Warner Bros. This means that Netflix has just snapped up "The Big Bang Theory, The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, The Wizard of Oz, and the DC Universe," which Netflix notes should live right at home next to its own huge hits such as "Stranger Things, KPop Demon Hunters and Squid Game."
As you might imagine, Greg Peters, co-CEO of Netflix, is pretty pleased with the buy:
“This acquisition will improve our offering and accelerate our business for decades to come.Warner Bros. has helped define entertainment for more than a century and continues to do so with phenomenal creative executives and production capabilities. With our global reach and proven business model, we can introduce a broader audience to the worlds they create—giving our members more options, attracting more fans to our best-in-class streaming service, strengthening the entire entertainment industry and creating more value for shareholders.”
The deal won't happen right away, though. First, Warner Bros and Discovery have to part ways, as the latter is becoming its own publicly-traded company sometime in Q3 2026. Once that's done, Netflix is set to close the deal and snap up all of those IPs for itself. I just hope they agree to keep the Animaniacs in the water tower.
While the press release covers a ton of reasons why these two juggernauts' meeting is a huge deal for the entertainment industry, it also opens the door for Warner Bros' huge catalog of TV shows and movies to enjoy the server stability that Netflix's chaos monkeys can provide. And if that sentence made zero sense to you, you should check out how troops of chaos monkeys help keep your Netflix fast and stable. They're going to be the ones responsible for ensuring you always have access to your next Game of Thrones binge, after all.
