Warner Bros. Discovery — home to major animated entertainment brands such as the classic Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo and Hanna-Barbera catalogs as well as Cartoon Network’s stable of hits — and Paramount Global — purveyors of SpongeBob SquarePants, PAW Patrol, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Sonic the Hedgehog and more Nickelodeon toon favorites — are discussing a possible merger, according to info first reported by Axios and confirmed by Variety without comment.
Sources disclosed that WBD’s CEO David Zaslav, who sparked ire across Toon Town with cuts to animated content in the wake of the Warner Bros.-Discovery merger, and Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish had a lunch meeting Tuesday in New York to talk about combining the two entertainment giants. Zaslav, they say, has also discussed the matter with Shari Redstone, who owns a controlling stake in Paramount Global through National Amusements Inc. Paramount Global is itself the result of a 2019 merger of CBS and Viacom, driven by Redstone, who has reportedly been shopping her shares in National Amusements.
Should it go through, the move could result in yet another streaming platform recombination of WBD’s Max and Paramount+, which could provide stiffer competition for Netflix and Disney+. The combined outfit would also blend the major movie divisions Warner Bros. Pictures and Paramount Pictures, as well as television networks including Cartoon Network, HBO, TBS (WBD), Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon (PG).
Terms of the deal under discussion were not revealed.
[Source: Variety]
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