For 72 Billion US Dollars: Netflix Wants to Acquire the Film Division of Warner Bros. Discovery

[10:31 Sat,6.December 2025 by Rudi Schmidts]

Netflix announced today that it intends to acquire the film division of Warner Bros. Discovery for 72 billion US dollars. If antitrust authorities have no objections, the acquisition is expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2026. Among other things, the streaming service HBO Max would then also transfer to Netflix. (This launches in Germany in January). However, various Warner news channels such as CNN and TNT will be spun off beforehand and will therefore not be part of this deal.

In the past, Warner Bros. Discovery has already openly sought a buyer - which is why it was previously known that Paramount and Comcast, in addition to Netflix, had also shown interest. Including debt and cash reserves, the total value of Warner Bros. Discovery is now estimated at 82.7 billion US dollars - which may not be easily affordable even for Netflix.

Netflix wants to acquire the film division of Warner Bros. Discovery

Of course, of great interest is a look at the "Warner Library," which contains classic series and films such as "Casablanca," "Harry Potter," or "Friends" - which will probably be seen more often on Netflix now.

In reality, however, antitrust authorities could still place some obstacles in the planned path of the acquisition, as Netflix is already the world&s leading streaming service, which can position itself even more powerfully against the remaining competition with this acquisition. The subsequently added HBO Max has about 130 million subscribers worldwide, although it must be noted that many viewers may subscribe to several streaming services in parallel, which in this case could possibly be merged into one subscription. However, the exact nature of the merger will only be clear once the acquisition is approved and completed.

Furthermore, after the deal, the Warner Bros. game studios will also belong to Netflix, which has been experimenting for some time on whether digital games can also be distributed via the platform. Since the game studios Avalanche and Rocksteady were not also spun off before the deal, Netflix will probably continue to have interest in this area as well.

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deutsche Version dieser Seite: Netflix will die Filmsparte von Warner Bros. Discovery übernehmen