Jared Kushner Joins Paramount’s Hostile Bid For Warner Bros
01:30:
(JVL)
Hello, everyone.
01:30:
(JVL)
This is JVL here with my Bulwark colleagues, Catherine Rampell and Sonny Bunch.
01:35:
(JVL)
And there is big news in Hollywood land because Warner Brothers, the storied movie studio, has maybe been sold to Netflix.
01:48:
(JVL)
which like 10 years ago would have been really bad and made Hollywood upset.
01:54:
(JVL)
And now has Hollywood sort of upset, but for other reasons, because Paramount and Larry Ellison and his son have maybe missed out on the deal.
02:06:
(JVL)
It's all very confusing.
02:08:
(JVL)
And Sonny, can I just let you set up
02:11:
(JVL)
the story, the state of play, and then we can let Catherine go to town on it.
02:15:
(Sonny Bunch)
Yeah, the very short version here is that Paramount Skydance wanted to buy Warner Brothers.
02:21:
(Sonny Bunch)
They came in and they said, we're going to pay you $22 a share.
02:25:
(Sonny Bunch)
And then it was $25.
02:26:
(Sonny Bunch)
They made a series of private bids to Warner Brothers, all of which were rebuffed.
02:31:
(Sonny Bunch)
And then there began an official bidding process.
02:34:
(Sonny Bunch)
And Netflix was always kind of on the periphery of this.
02:37:
(Sonny Bunch)
All the industry watchers that I...
02:40:
(Sonny Bunch)
know of and listen to and talk to were like, Netflix is just trying to drive the price up.
02:44:
(Sonny Bunch)
They're not actually interested.
02:46:
(Sonny Bunch)
This is not their business.
02:47:
(Sonny Bunch)
The owning a theatrical first movie studio is not their business.
02:52:
(Sonny Bunch)
And so I think people were kind of surprised when it shook out this way, because the other thing the other thing to consider here is that it's not just a movie studio.
02:59:
(Sonny Bunch)
Of course, there are also cable networks.
03:01:
(Sonny Bunch)
There are parks there.
03:03:
(Sonny Bunch)
There's all sorts of other elements to this.
03:05:
(Sonny Bunch)
When Netflix came in with a deal that was worth
03:08:
(Sonny Bunch)
more just for Warner Brothers Studio than Warner Brothers and the cable companies.
03:13:
(Sonny Bunch)
The sense is that Warner Brothers has kind of a fiduciary duty to take that.
03:17:
(Sonny Bunch)
I think Catherine can handle the actual finances of this better.
03:20:
(Sonny Bunch)
But the reason Hollywood is like
03:23:
(Sonny Bunch)
both kind of freaking out and also kind of like, well, let's see what happens here is because Netflix has been spending tons and tons of money in Hollywood over the last decade and a half making new original things.
03:34:
(Sonny Bunch)
For lack of a nicer way to put it, they don't have to deal with all the Trump shenanigans that are going on with Paramount and Skydance.
03:40:
(Sonny Bunch)
Everybody in Hollywood is very nervous about what the Ellisons are doing with Trump.
03:45:
(Sonny Bunch)
And I think that that is a that's a big part of this story.
03:48:
(JVL)
Yeah, and we're going to get to the politics of this in a minute because you can't escape the politics of it.
03:55:
(JVL)
Catherine, can you explain to us a little bit
03:59:
(JVL)
Do we know how much of Warner Brothers is being sold?
04:03:
(JVL)
Do we know how Warner Brothers Discovery is being split here?
04:06:
(JVL)
Do we know?
04:06:
(JVL)
I mean, it's not a cash offer, right?
04:09:
(JVL)
Like it's stock exchange.
04:11:
(Catherine Rampell)
It sort of depends on what happens with all of this.
04:13:
(Catherine Rampell)
It looked like all of this was resolved.
04:17:
(Catherine Rampell)
As Sonny mentioned, there was a big bidding war.
04:19:
(Catherine Rampell)
where you had Paramount and Netflix and potentially some others interested in buying Warner Brothers Discovery, which was putting itself up for sale.
04:28:
(Catherine Rampell)
And as of Friday, it looked like this was resolved, that Netflix had won the bidding war and they were going to take part of Warner Brothers Discovery, particularly the film assets, but they didn't want
04:42:
(Catherine Rampell)
The part of it that includes linear cable and CNN, for that matter.
04:47:
(Catherine Rampell)
It looked like this was done.
04:48:
(Catherine Rampell)
Paramount kind of threw a hissy fit and was mad that they had been rebuffed.
04:54:
(Catherine Rampell)
They wanted to buy the whole kit and caboodle, including CNN, you know, which maybe would fit in somehow with their own news gathering operations now that they...
05:04:
(Catherine Rampell)
own CBS and are making some big changes there.
05:09:
(Catherine Rampell)
But they didn't win out.
05:10:
(Catherine Rampell)
Today, there was a hostile takeover bid, which does not usually work out, but we have to see how it plays out.
05:20:
(Catherine Rampell)
And in today's hostile takeover bid, they have the backing of, just coincidentally, the president's son-in-law.
05:29:
(JVL)
Oh, yeah.
05:29:
(Catherine Rampell)
Yes.
05:31:
(Catherine Rampell)
I know you said to leave the politics aside, but it is really difficult to talk about this without getting into these strange alliances with various grifting Nepo babies who are involved.
05:44:
(JVL)
Well, the president's son-in-law is a big media guy because he himself once ran the New York Observer.
05:51:
(JVL)
So I can see why they would have gone to him.
05:53:
(JVL)
To be a partner in this, Catherine.
05:56:
(Catherine Rampell)
It's his skill set.
05:57:
(Catherine Rampell)
It's his journalistic skill set, clearly.
06:00:
(Catherine Rampell)
That's what this is about.
06:00:
(Sonny Bunch)
It's a real legion of doom, by the way, this consortium that is backing this.
06:05:
(Sonny Bunch)
It's because it's not just, you know, Kushner's involved.
06:08:
(Sonny Bunch)
There's also the Saudi Arabian, you know, investment fund, their sovereign wealth fund.
06:13:
(JVL)
Their sovereign wealth fund, too.
06:14:
(Sonny Bunch)
is uh in in into this for something like 24 billion dollars uh tencent which is a chinese owned firm uh is also involved with that tencent has some dealings with paramount skydance through other skydance productions uh which is kind of interesting in and of itself so it's like it's not just uh trump and kushner it's also the south the saudis and the chinese which you know who would be better to own superman
06:40:
(Sonny Bunch)
Then these this this group.
06:41:
(JVL)
OK, there's so many things here now that we saw a report just minutes before we came on that both Netflix and Paramount had sought to hire Jason Miller to help represent themselves.
06:54:
(JVL)
I guess we just don't even pretend that the government doesn't corrupt anymore.
06:59:
(Catherine Rampell)
No.
06:59:
(Catherine Rampell)
Well, and to be clear, we've mentioned, sorry, moving on.
07:06:
(Catherine Rampell)
We mentioned, well, we've mentioned Kushner's involvement.
07:09:
(Catherine Rampell)
You mentioned Jason Miller, clearly a Trump whisperer of sorts.
07:14:
(Catherine Rampell)
There's also the fact that David Ellison at Paramount Skydance is the son of Trump's BFF, or at least BFF tier friend, Larry Ellison.
07:30:
(Catherine Rampell)
So there is a lot of involvement here from Trump land.
07:35:
(Catherine Rampell)
And that's part of the reason why Paramount thought that they had the leading edge.
07:40:
(Catherine Rampell)
They've been trying to get...
07:42:
(Catherine Rampell)
These goodies from Warner Brothers for quite some time have been failing and meanwhile are basically asking Trump and Trump's DOJ to put their thumb on the scale as a favor to Larry and David Ellison.
07:59:
(Catherine Rampell)
And they've also like thrown in some other favors in that favor bank as well, including promising to distribute rush hour for
08:07:
(Catherine Rampell)
which Trump and apparently no one else on on Earth wants.
08:11:
(Catherine Rampell)
But I definitely saw that through the lens of they wanted Trump's help in getting this deal done.
08:17:
(JVL)
And what role would Trump appointing Barry Weiss to run CBS News was done to make Donald Trump happy.
08:23:
(JVL)
Right.
08:24:
(JVL)
In fact, he CBS interview, he talked about how much he approved of that hire.
08:28:
(JVL)
That's right.
08:28:
(JVL)
It's good for her.
08:29:
(JVL)
I'm glad that she she can take that to herself with her fierce independence.
08:34:
(Sonny Bunch)
Catherine, can I ask Catherine a question?
08:36:
(Sonny Bunch)
Because this is something I don't know very well.
08:39:
(Sam Stein)
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Tell Comm you heard about them from me.
10:11:
(Sonny Bunch)
Both Netflix and Paramount Skydance included a, I think it was $5 billion chunk of money if the deal doesn't pass regulatory muster, which feels like, I don't know enough about this world.
10:24:
(Sonny Bunch)
Is that a normal thing or is that an unusual thing?
10:27:
(Sonny Bunch)
Because that struck me as very weird.
10:30:
(Catherine Rampell)
So there is often a breakup fee.
10:32:
(Catherine Rampell)
That's what this is.
10:34:
(Catherine Rampell)
Put in the language of a proposed merger that is expected to face some sort of antitrust scrutiny.
10:40:
(Catherine Rampell)
This is an unusually big one and honestly would be a great deal for Warner Brothers.
10:46:
(Catherine Rampell)
I don't know that they put themselves up for sale in the hopes that it would get blocked by some sort of antitrust authority and therefore they would just get to collect their payday and move on with their lives and put it towards their operating budget.
10:58:
(Catherine Rampell)
I don't know that that was the case.
11:00:
(Catherine Rampell)
Probably not.
11:01:
(Catherine Rampell)
But if that was their strategy, it may be a very effective one, because even without Trump's involvement in all of this, this size of a merger would likely face some antitrust hurdles.
11:13:
(Catherine Rampell)
I just want to make that clear.
11:15:
(Catherine Rampell)
These are two enormous, well, all three of the parties we're talking about are enormous entities and a merger involving Warner Brothers and either Paramount or Netflix would face AT Trust scrutiny.
11:27:
(Catherine Rampell)
And in fact, when it was Netflix that seemed to be the winner of this particular drama, you saw a lot of statements from like the Writers Guild, SAG-AFTRA and other unions protesting that they didn't want these two parties to merge.
11:44:
(Catherine Rampell)
paramount with warner brothers would also present some major antitrust concerns now uh again that that would happen no matter what the question is if trump wants to put his thumb on the scale and block the merger for non-consumer related concerns uh so because he wants to
12:06:
(Catherine Rampell)
hand this gift over to his friend, Mr. Ellison, or because he wants to see Rush Hour 4 get made or whatever, that actually puts the government's case in jeopardy.
12:19:
(Catherine Rampell)
The irony of all of this is that
12:23:
(Catherine Rampell)
a merger of this size between Netflix and Warner Brothers would probably face hurdles no matter what.
12:29:
(Catherine Rampell)
But the fact that Trump has publicly weighed in and said he wants to intervene would be a very useful argument for the merged entity to make in court and say, see, they're only trying to block this match made in heaven because Trump is weaponizing the government against us.
12:48:
(Catherine Rampell)
And we know that this works, that kind of argument, you know, that this case is only being brought
12:53:
(Catherine Rampell)
for political reasons, for retribution reasons.
12:56:
(Catherine Rampell)
That argument actually worked before with some of the same entities here when AT&T merged with Time Warner a few years back during the first Trump administration.
13:10:
(Catherine Rampell)
Again, there were valid antitrust concerns there based on consumer welfare and all of that.
13:15:
(Catherine Rampell)
But there were reports that
13:17:
(Catherine Rampell)
that Trump wanted to block it to punish CNN, which was owned by Time Warner.
13:23:
(Catherine Rampell)
And that helped in court.
13:26:
(Catherine Rampell)
They actually won that case.
13:27:
(Catherine Rampell)
They were able to merge and they defeated the government.
13:29:
(Catherine Rampell)
So you could imagine the same thing happening here.
13:31:
(JVL)
Catherine, how does the hostile takeover process proceed from here, right?
13:37:
(JVL)
I mean, I guess the question is, had the deal already been struck recently?
13:40:
(JVL)
Or were the terms of the initial deal not yet finalized?
13:45:
(JVL)
And so that's why they've gone hostile?
13:47:
(Catherine Rampell)
Yeah.
13:47:
(Catherine Rampell)
Yeah.
13:47:
(Catherine Rampell)
So they have to be finalized by the shareholders themselves.
13:51:
(Catherine Rampell)
So the board can agree that this is the best possible deal.
13:56:
(Catherine Rampell)
We've chosen out of our many suitors Netflix.
14:00:
(Catherine Rampell)
But ultimately, the shareholders have to approve of it because you could imagine that
14:05:
(Catherine Rampell)
Maybe the board is doing what's in their own best interests and not what, you know, they all get golden parachutes or whatever, and not in the interest of shareholders.
14:13:
(Catherine Rampell)
This is just a very standard thing.
14:15:
(Catherine Rampell)
So I thought this was a done deal.
14:17:
(Catherine Rampell)
But now that Paramount has come in and offered even more money, it may not be a done deal.
14:23:
(Catherine Rampell)
And particularly since you have Donald Trump, again, publicly saying he's going to get involved.
14:29:
(Catherine Rampell)
He said this on the red carpet last night.
14:32:
(Donald Trump)
Should they be allowed to buy Warner Brothers?
14:34:
(Donald Trump)
Well, that's the question.
14:35:
(Donald Trump)
They have a very big market share.
14:38:
(Donald Trump)
And when they have Warner Brothers, you know, that share goes up a lot.
14:41:
(Donald Trump)
So I don't know.
14:41:
(Donald Trump)
That's going to be for some economists to tell.
14:44:
(Donald Trump)
And also, and I'll be involved in that decision, too.
14:48:
(Donald Trump)
But they have a very big market share.
14:49:
(Donald Trump)
Did he make any guarantees to you about the merger, if they do merge?
14:53:
(Donald Trump)
No, no, not at all.
14:54:
(Donald Trump)
He came up.
14:55:
(Donald Trump)
He was in the Oval Office last week.
14:57:
(Donald Trump)
I have a lot of respect for him.
14:58:
(Donald Trump)
He's a great person.
15:01:
(Donald Trump)
But he's done one of the greatest jobs in the history of movies and other things.
15:06:
(Donald Trump)
And he's got a lot of interesting things happening aside from what you're talking about.
15:11:
(Donald Trump)
But it is a big market share, there's no question about it.
15:15:
(Donald Trump)
It could be a problem.
15:16:
(Catherine Rampell)
That may be a red flag to shareholders because they're like, well, even if it's political and maybe the judge will throw it out ultimately because the lawyers representing
15:29:
(Catherine Rampell)
the merged entity or the trying to merge entity will say this is being done for political reasons.
15:35:
(Catherine Rampell)
Even if all of that happens and they ultimately prevail, it will be a very long, drawn out process.
15:40:
(Catherine Rampell)
And so they may say to hell with it, like, let's choose the suitor that Donald Trump wants because we think that that's going to get through.
15:48:
(JVL)
I don't know.
15:48:
(JVL)
We'll have to see.
15:49:
(JVL)
That was my question, right?
15:50:
(JVL)
Does the very fact of Trump saying he will do this
15:55:
(JVL)
pressure Warner Brothers into going with Trump's preferred partner.
16:01:
(Catherine Rampell)
Well, he's been hinting at that for a while, and the board still rejected Paramount's offer, which is why it's a hostile bid, and now it's left off to the shareholders.
16:12:
(Catherine Rampell)
Right.
16:12:
(JVL)
Do we think this gets done any time in the near term one way or the other?
16:16:
(JVL)
Could it could it resolve quickly?
16:18:
(JVL)
Like if Netflix pulls out, can that if Netflix just says to hell with this, I'm out?
16:23:
(Catherine Rampell)
Does that if they do let it resolve?
16:25:
(Catherine Rampell)
I mean, that would that would certainly be one fewer hurdle for Paramount, which, again, has been salivating over this for a while.
16:33:
(Catherine Rampell)
And they have not only Donald Trump threatening various antitrust action against their competitor.
16:41:
(Catherine Rampell)
But they have Jared Kushner involved, as we were discussing, and I guess, you know, some other leading lights from Trump land.
16:50:
(Catherine Rampell)
So all of that should be working in Paramount's favor.
16:54:
(Catherine Rampell)
Now, just as an aside,
16:57:
(Catherine Rampell)
The very fact that Kushner is involved makes me think it is not a good deal for Paramount because Jared Kushner has not had the best instincts on profitable investments.
17:08:
(Catherine Rampell)
Folks who are watching this can Google 666 Fifth Avenue and see about his investment record there.
17:14:
(Catherine Rampell)
So it may not be ultimately a good deal for shareholders for Paramount to buy Warner Brothers, given the folks who are involved to make it through.
17:23:
(Catherine Rampell)
But like, I don't know that it's going to work out.
17:25:
(Catherine Rampell)
But that said, this may not be about profits for.
17:30:
(JVL)
Right.
17:31:
(JVL)
Well, that's what I was going to ask you.
17:32:
(JVL)
Right.
17:32:
(JVL)
I mean, you say this may not make sense in terms of like dollars, but there are in in the Trump era, many business deals, which don't really make sense if you're thinking about like value and return on investment in the near place.
17:49:
(JVL)
And I think of Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter.
17:52:
(JVL)
which was a financial disaster for everybody involved.
17:55:
(JVL)
All the people who are holding debt on that are eventually going to have to write it down.
17:58:
(JVL)
But it was very useful for Elon Musk's project of getting involved and partaking in ownership of the United States government for a short time and for all the things thereafter.
18:12:
(JVL)
It strikes me that that's what this play means for the Ellison's.
18:18:
(Catherine Rampell)
Yeah, I think that's absolutely what it's about.
18:20:
(Catherine Rampell)
It's not about getting a dollar figure return on the investment in Warner Brothers per se.
18:27:
(Catherine Rampell)
It's about buying all of that influence with potentially CNN, with CNN coupled potentially with CBS, controlling a lot more of the media ecosystem, which will help them ingratiate themselves to Trump further.
18:46:
(Catherine Rampell)
and potentially further the interests, the financial interests of the other properties that they have.
18:53:
(JVL)
Right, of Oracle.
18:54:
(JVL)
It's all about AI.
18:55:
(Catherine Rampell)
Exactly.
18:56:
(JVL)
That's great.
18:57:
(JVL)
Sonny, not that anybody but us cares about this, but how bad is this for the cinematic arts?
19:03:
(JVL)
Is everything going to look like Red 1 and Red Notice?
19:06:
(JVL)
Yes.
19:07:
(JVL)
Right?
19:07:
(Sonny Bunch)
Well, everything was going to look like that.
19:09:
(JVL)
Is Warner Brothers, which put out Oppenheimer, now we're going to get everything that looks like it's shot on a handheld screen?
19:16:
(Sonny Bunch)
Yeah, no, I would say, well, so it really just depends.
19:20:
(Sonny Bunch)
It depends on so many different things, right?
19:22:
(Sonny Bunch)
Like the biggest question from my perspective as a lover of the movie theater experience is what happens to theaters here?
19:29:
(Sonny Bunch)
And theaters are already in a very perilous state, right?
19:32:
(Sonny Bunch)
The one, two, three punch of the rise of streaming, the covid shutdowns and then the strikes like have have just like really hammered the the theatrical ecosystem pretty badly.
19:44:
(Sonny Bunch)
And knocking out 16 percent of the of the box office take, which is what Warner Brothers represents, would be disastrous.
19:53:
(Sonny Bunch)
It would lead to a bunch of multiplexes closing.
19:56:
(Sonny Bunch)
You would see fewer screens.
19:57:
(Sonny Bunch)
Fewer screens means fewer people going to the theaters.
19:59:
(Sonny Bunch)
which means fewer movies being made for theaters.
20:02:
(Sonny Bunch)
It just creates a whole vicious cycle.
20:03:
(Sonny Bunch)
It's bad.
20:05:
(Sonny Bunch)
And I am not convinced that either of these options is good for stopping that.
20:11:
(Sonny Bunch)
I mean, look, on the Netflix side of things, you have Netflix's natural aversion to theaters.
20:17:
(Sonny Bunch)
Theoretically, maybe the FCC can make them promise to do a universal style 17-day window with longer windows for bigger movies.
20:25:
(Sonny Bunch)
I don't know.
20:26:
(Sonny Bunch)
But I don't think Paramount's really the answer here either, because as we saw with the 20th Century Fox Disney merger...
20:33:
(Sonny Bunch)
That led to a massive reduction in the number of movies and theaters, because why would you as a studio compete with yourself by putting more movies?
20:42:
(Sonny Bunch)
Right.
20:42:
(Sonny Bunch)
So so what will end up happening if Paramount does buy Warner Brothers is that Paramount will put out Batman and Superman and the big IP plays for Warner Brothers, Harry Potter spinoffs, et cetera, et cetera.
20:55:
(Sonny Bunch)
That is not good for anyone.
20:58:
(Sonny Bunch)
That's not good for anyone in the business.
21:00:
(Sonny Bunch)
It's not good for the 150,000 people who work in movie theaters around the country, right?
21:05:
(Sonny Bunch)
Like that is in and of itself bad.
21:07:
(Sonny Bunch)
The other question here is what happens with HBO?
21:10:
(Sonny Bunch)
HBO is the biggest and best of the, you know, kind of prestigy type TV channels, cable streamers, et cetera.
21:17:
(Sonny Bunch)
And I think that, you know,
21:20:
(Sonny Bunch)
I think a lot of people are worried about what happens with HBO if you send it to Netflix and it gets the standard Netflix treatment, which is binge-style releases and content that you can watch while also scrolling through Instagram.
21:35:
(Sonny Bunch)
That's the Netflix model.
21:37:
(Sonny Bunch)
Nobody wants that for HBO.
21:39:
(Sonny Bunch)
Now, I will say that Ted Sarandos is a... Ted Sarandos has often spoken very fondly of HBO.
21:45:
(Sonny Bunch)
I think he respects what they do and would be...
21:50:
(Sonny Bunch)
hesitant to mess with that in any real way.
21:53:
(Sonny Bunch)
And, you know, I don't know.
21:54:
(Sonny Bunch)
I hear a lot of people, folks like the Entertainment Strategy Guy, good source on this sort of thing.
22:01:
(Sonny Bunch)
He says, look, maybe this is an excuse for Netflix to change their whole strategy.
22:04:
(Sonny Bunch)
They could do more theatrical.
22:06:
(Sonny Bunch)
They could do weekly releases.
22:08:
(Sonny Bunch)
Maybe.
22:08:
(Sonny Bunch)
I don't know.
22:09:
(Sonny Bunch)
But regardless, I have no faith in Paramount doing anything good with this either.
22:16:
(Sonny Bunch)
It's a mess all around.
22:19:
(Sonny Bunch)
And as Catherine mentioned, the best option for Warner Brothers might be just to pocket that $5 billion and use it to pay down their debt and keep doing what they've been doing.
22:29:
(JVL)
Great.
22:30:
(JVL)
Well, we're going to be in a place where we have consolidation and declining competition in
22:38:
(JVL)
a sector that is near and dear to American hearts.
22:42:
(JVL)
And that's the good option.
22:43:
(JVL)
The bad option is one of our beloved movie studios becomes part of a tool of the oligarchs who are aligned with Trump.
22:53:
(JVL)
Fantastic.
22:54:
(JVL)
Fantastic.
22:56:
(JVL)
Catherine, Sonny, thank you for being here to unpack this very niche boutique issue.
23:01:
(JVL)
Everybody, if you want to hear stuff like this all the time, hit like, hit subscribe, follow the channel.
23:05:
(JVL)
It really helps us when you hit the subscribe button, actually.
23:09:
(JVL)
And we'd love to have you ride with us as we catalog all the terrible things that are happening in America on a daily basis.
23:15:
(JVL)
Good luck, America.