Amid the multibillion-dollar battle for Warner Bros., the company loses $252 million

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With Paramount Skydance’s attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery becoming increasingly ambitious, a difficult reality has come to light.

Paramount’s traditional TV networks—like CBS, Comedy Central, and MTV—are seeing a significant decline in viewers and revenue, and the company’s film studio is currently operating at a loss. In the last three months of the previous year, Paramount reported an operating loss of $339 million, which included $500 million in costs related to restructuring after David Ellison’s Skydance Media acquired a controlling stake in August.

That performance underscores why Paramount desperately wants Warner Bros. Discovery.

Paramount executives are aggressively trying to overtake Netflix as the leading streaming service. They recently increased their offer for Warner to $31 per share, and added extra incentives, making the potential deal worth over $110 billion.

But on Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery released its own gloomy fourth-quarter financial results.

Hollywood Inc.

Paramount Skydance saw increased revenue in the final quarter of 2025, largely due to growth in its streaming services.

Warner revenue declined 6% to $9.46 billion and the company recorded a $252 million loss.

Okay, so Warner Bros. Discovery is seeing some growth with its streaming services, HBO Max and Discovery+. But here’s the catch: it’s not growing fast enough to offset the losses happening with their traditional cable channels. In fact, revenue from those cable channels dropped a significant 12%, landing at $4.2 billion. It’s a clear sign of the times – streaming is up, but cable is definitely on the decline for Warner Bros. Discovery.

The decline in advertising revenue was partly due to losing the NBA contract on TNT last year. Profits for traditional TV channels, before accounting for interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization, fell by 27% to $1.4 billion.

Taking over Warner’s historic studio in Burbank would give the Ellison-led Paramount a vast library of programming with Harry Potter, Batman and other DC Comics and television shows including “The Pitt,” “The White Lotus,” and “Abbott Elementary.”

Paramount would be able to make more TV shows and movies. Last year, they only released eight films as an example.

During a call with financial analysts on Thursday, Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav highlighted the recent success of Warner Bros. films like “Sinners,” “Weapons,” and “The Minecraft Movie.” Zaslav has led the company for almost four years, taking the reins from AT&T.

Warner films generated $4.4 billion in theatrical revenue in 2025.

Warner Bros. Discovery aimed to become the leading and most creative storytelling company globally, and according to Zaslav, they’ve achieved that goal as of 2025.

Okay, so even though the movies and shows made a lot of money at the box office, Warner Bros. actually lost about 13% in overall revenue from their movie and TV studios – bringing it down to $3.2 billion. And their profits, before things like taxes and depreciation were taken out, fell even more – by 23%, down to $728 million. It’s a little confusing, but basically, while things looked good, the studio actually made less money overall.

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President Trump recently threatened Netflix, warning them they would face repercussions if they didn’t remove Susan Rice from their board of directors.

The company is still dealing with the financial fallout from its past acquisitions and the layoffs that followed.

Warner Bros. Discovery reported a $252 million loss for the quarter, largely due to a $1.3 billion write-down. This write-down reflects ongoing costs related to the 2022 merger with Discovery, as well as a decrease in the estimated value of some of Warner’s content.

Warner Bros. Discovery is currently dealing with $33.5 billion in debt, a lasting consequence of the 2022 merger. This merger resulted in significant job cuts and the cancellation of various TV shows and movies.

When I first arrived, we made the difficult decision to cancel many movies and TV series—projects we didn’t believe would ultimately succeed, according to Zaslav.

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Okay, so things are really heating up over at Warner Bros. Discovery. They’ve given their shareholders until March 20th to cast their votes on who they want to take over. From what I’m hearing, the board itself is leaning towards accepting Netflix’s offer in this whole bidding war – it’s a pretty big deal, and everyone’s watching to see how this plays out!

With film production slowing down in Los Angeles, many entertainment workers have lost their jobs, contributing to growing concerns about employment in the industry.

Honestly, as someone who keeps a close eye on the studios, Warner Bros. Discovery’s recent earnings report was a bit disappointing. They actually lost 10 cents per share in the last quarter, and that was worse than what experts were predicting – they’d expected a loss of only 3 cents. It’s a sign things aren’t quite where they need to be right now.

Despite the latest financial report, Warner Bros. Discovery stock held steady at around $29 per share on Thursday. This was likely due to competition between Netflix and Paramount for Warner content. Just last summer, Warner shares were trading for around $12, showing a significant increase.

According to Zaslav, the company’s board is carefully managing a competitive sales process. Since September, when Ellison first made a bid for Warner, they’ve been in discussions with four potential buyers.

According to Zaslav, strong interest in the company has resulted in eight price increases, boosting its value by 63% since the initial offer in September. He added that this process is creating substantial benefits for Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.

If either Netflix or Paramount buys Warner, the new owner will likely need to make significant cuts to jobs and spending for several years.

Acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery would saddle either company with more than $60 billion in debt.

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2026-02-26 19:31