David Folkenflik

You'd have Warner Brothers Studios and Paramount Studios under the same roof.

You'd have Paramount Plus, the streaming property, which is a bit on the smaller side, paired with HBO Max, one of the dominant streamers coming from Hollywood.

You'd have CBS and CBS News with CNN and Comedy Central and Discovery and TBS and a bunch of other properties showing a lot of entertainment and sports.

This is going to be a major player in Hollywood intended to take on the streamers, not just Netflix, but also Amazon Prime and Apple to have, you know, a major force to walk into the future of streaming.

The Paramount deal would create a Hollywood behemoth to take on streaming giants, very much including Netflix.

It would put CBS, CNN, streamers HBO Max and Paramount+.

and Warner Brothers and Paramount Studios under the same roof.

Ellison is backed by the immense wealth of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison.

The deal's not a sure thing.

Antitrust regulators have to scrutinize it in Washington and Europe, and the state attorney general of California has already promised to give it a tough review.

But Paramount told Warner shareholders it will sail through such concerns.

The Ellisons have built warm ties with President Trump, who has taken a keen interest in who owns CNN.

and has proven willing to interfere.

David Folkenflik, NPR News.

Warner Brothers originally didn't want Paramount to be bid at all.

Paramount triggered all of this by saying, we want to take you guys over.

And that opened this up and it struck a deal with Netflix, which the Warner Brothers board, the Warner Brothers leadership vastly preferred, at least initially.

Netflix had said, we'll give you a deal valued at $83 billion and take over your streaming assets, your studios, your intellectual property like DC Studios, Harry Potter and the like.

And we'll spin off your cable channels.

Paramount wanted the whole enchilada, the whole magilla, and ultimately sweetened its deal to a value in excess of about $111 billion.