Ted Sarandos

In the theatrical business, it's highly competitive.

There's a lot of output that's going to go through there.

The reason I'm not going to put it in writing, I wouldn't want to do this deal only to put ourselves at some bizarre competitive disadvantage down the road.

And I've earned some of the skepticism about the theater business because I've said things about the state of the theater business, but I said that in the context of a business that we were not in.

And today, we own Warner Brothers, we own a theatrical distribution entity, and we're going to want to continue to invest against the success that they've had.

Pam and Mike just opened their ninth number one film at the box office, nine in a row.

That's the kind of winning that we want to do with Warner Brothers and the theater owners.

Lucas, can I, sorry, if I could go back to what you said about the trade unions as well.

I think it's very important that I would like to have the trade unions to support this deal on behalf of their membership.

Because what's gonna happen in the alternative of this deal, I know there's some people who believe, you know, maybe if this deal doesn't happen, there'll be no sale of Warner Brothers.

This sale is going to happen.

It's gonna be Netflix or it's gonna be Paramount.

And if it's Paramount, they've told everybody what they're gonna do.

They're going to have six, they've said $6 billion in cuts, but they've also told everyone who they're borrowing the money from that they're gonna de-lever the company from six or seven times down to two times in 18 months, which means $16 billion in cuts.

So that's what the trade unions who represent the people who make movies, writers, directors, producers,

the crews of IATSE and the Teamsters, they're going to be working in a business that's going to be $16 billion smaller, even than the $3 billion that Paramount has already cut out of its own company.

So you're talking about an enormous contraction of the business, and the trade unions, I think, should come out and support this deal explicitly on behalf of their membership to protect employment and jobs.

We will continue to offer it as a standalone unit.

80% of HBO Max subscribers in the United States have a Netflix subscription today, actually closer to 85%.

So I think what that says is this is a very complimentary business, and we'll be able to put those businesses together and give those consumers a pretty steep discount.