Michael Barbaro

Netflix is now kind of famous for a formula in which you get lots of stuff, but some of it ain't so good.

Some of it is good.

Some of it's really good.

What happens if they win?

What happens if Paramount wins to the quotient of really, really good and garbage?

Right.

Right.

Game of Thrones does not come cheap.

That's just a reality.

So, Carl and Nicole, what you're both saying, I believe, is that if you're Netflix or Paramount, you have some incentive not to pay top dollar for prestige television anymore.

And that, of course, would be sad for those of us who grew up watching not just Game of Thrones, but Sex and the City, The Sopranos.

I'm on my seventh full series rewatch.

So that would be sad.

And...

I don't know if you agree with this, but Netflix has taught us something really important, which is that people will pay and keep paying for volume over a complete devotion to quality.

Okay, so I think we've reached the moment in the conversation where we need to give listeners a little bit of a roadmap of what to expect is about to happen and who is most likely to ultimately win control of this crown jewel, Warner Brothers.

So I wonder if the three of you can venture a responsible, journalistically informed guess around

about whether a hostile takeover bid for the entirety of Warner Bros.

Discovery might prevail, Lauren, or if we think the existing deal in which Netflix gets the streaming and studio part of the business already announced is the likeliest outcome.

Okay.