The conglomerate Paramount Skydance owned by the CEO, David Ellisonhas revealed the first details about the future regarding the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
After the WBD administrative board described the latest offer from Paramount Skydance (PSKY) as a “superior proposal” to the merger agreement they had in progress with Netflix, and in turn, the streamer chose not to counteroffer and withdraw from the bid, PSKY is preparing to buy the last great and classic Hollywood film studio.
Paramount will acquire all of Warner Bros. Discoveryincluding its film and streaming division: Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max, as well as its global television networks division, called Discovery Globalwhich is made up of TNT, CNN, TBS, CNN, HGTV, Food Network, among others.
The offer is for $31 per share, for a total of $111 billion, which will include the $33 million of debt that WB currently has on its books.
With many questions about how the merger between PSKY and WBD will work, the first details emerge (via Variety).
HBO MAX AND PARAMOUNT+ WILL MERGE INTO A SINGLE STREAMING PLATFORM
During a conference with investors, David Ellison detailed elements of the merger, explaining:
“We plan to merge both services, which today gives us just over 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers. We believe that This positions us to compete with the leaders in the sector. And Paramount, By the middle of this year, we will have completed the consolidation of our three services under a single unified platformand you will see us take a similar approach for this platform in the future. “We believe the combined offering, given the amount of content and what we can do from a technological standpoint, will allow us to compete with the largest players in the DTC sector.”
It was not clear how it would be adopted by a single unified platform; That is, if HBO Max will be available as a platform within the service or if it will be fully integrated into Paramount+, nor has there been any talk about retaining the same name or will there be another rebranding in sight.
THE HBO BRAND WILL OPERATE INDEPENDENTLY
What the CEO did make clear was the direction that Paramount wants to give to HBO, currently directed by Casey Bloys. There is talk of giving him special treatment to continue developing and programming content without the strict supervision of Paramount executives:
“Casey and her team do an absolutely extraordinary job at HBO. And like we said, we plan for it to be able to operate independently, so that HBO can, frankly, do what it does incredibly well. Our opinion is that HBO should remain HBO. They built a phenomenal brand. They are leaders in the sector, and we just want them to continue doing more. But by bringing the platforms together, all of our content will be able to reach an even broader audience than we can reach independently.”
On the same call, Ellison told analysts that Game of Thrones It is his favorite HBO series. Curiously, it has just been announced that Warner Bros. is working on a movie from the universe GOTfocused on Aegon's conquest.
Source: https://cine3.com/hbo-max-paramount-una-sola-plataforma-hbo-permanece-independiente/
