At Netflix’s holiday/awards season kickoff party Tuesday night, one topic was strictly off-limits, the then-ongoing bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery, in which Netflix was competing against Paramount Skydance and Comcast.
Unlike Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, who pulled out from his Wednesday appearance at the NYT’s DealBook Summit, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos showed up at the streamer’s off-the-record event, mingling for hours and taking pictures with talent, including Jacob Elordi, Ted Danson, Rian Johnson and Mike Schur.
But if a reporter broached the WBD sale in any way, even as a joke, Sarandos would walk away. The Netflix boss clearly was not going to do anything that might jeopardize his company’s chances in the high-stakes auction.
Forty eight hours later, Netflix walked away as the winner, sealing an $82.7B deal with WBD for its Warner Bros. film and television studio as well as HBO/HBO Max.
This is a stunning development that comes exactly 15 years after the infamous comments by former HBO topper and CEO of parent Time Warner Jeff Bewkes, who in December 2010 dismissed Netflix as “the Albanian army” and a fad that would fade away.
Three months later, Netflix spectacularly outbid HBO for House of Cards with a two-season, 26-episode order vs a pilot pickup from the legacy network to announce itself as a original programming player and a disruptor ready to take down the traditional TV industry.
It has been doing just that for 15 years — from changing viewing habits to changing TV shows’ business model, spelling the end of the lucrative talent backend deals to establish a new industry standard that is now followed by almost everyone. Netflix also was the first to embrace a global footprint while betting on local language content, another revolutionary at the time concept that now is a basic rule for streaming success.
And now, Netflix is in poised to take control of one of the most…