If WarnerDiscovery’s New Talks With Skydance Didn’t Lead To An Offer, Ellison Would’ve Immediately Submitted His Director Nominees For Proxy Fight. Ted Sarandos & Greg Peters Planned Disciplined Exit If Price Climbed To $31/Share With Add-On Sweeteners Instead Of Netflix Responding With Counterbids.

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“For six months, the son of one of the world’s richest men kept hearing the same unfamiliar word: No.

Even before he closed a deal to combine his company with a much bigger one, David Ellison was already plotting to do it again. Once his Skydance Media took control of Paramount, he turned his attention to a Hollywood icon, launching an audacious takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery that would give the Ellison family control of a sprawling media empire.

His first offer was swatted away. So were his second and third. By the time Ellison made his sixth offer, Warner Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav stopped responding to his texts. Even when Warner officially accepted a rival offer from Netflix, Ellison refused to take no for an answer.

As the battle dragged on, Ellison sweetened his offers, ratcheted up the pressure, took the hostile bid directly to shareholders, threatened a bruising proxy fight, brought in President Trump allies to lobby, and treated the existing term sheet like paper waiting to be shredded.

On the ninth offer, the wealth and influence of the Ellisons finally won.

The dramatic bidding war ended on Thursday night, after Paramount made its latest attempt to buy Warner for $81 billion—and Netflix walked away from the deal. Shortly after photographers snapped Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos leaving the White House, the company announced that it wouldn’t match Ellison’s latest offer, which was 63% higher than his first.

And once Netflix dropped its own $72 billion deal for Warner’s studios and HBO Max streaming business, the scion of software billionaire Larry Ellison was poised to become one of the most powerful people in a town that once derided him as a nepo-baby.

Ellison, 43 years old, as Paramount chief executive will now control much of our attention: the shows we watch, the news we consume and the screens we stare at all day long, with a family portfolio that will include HBO, CNN, CBS News, the historic Warner Bros. studio lot and crown jewels such as DC Comics and Harry Potter.

As much as Ellison and his team had been telling anyone who would listen that his business would ultimately prevail in buying a company five times its size, the reaction on Friday from Hollywood to Washington to Wall Street was astonishment.

Paramount’s stock price shot up over 20% on Friday. Netflix’s surged nearly 14%. Politicians howled at the prospect of so much media power being consolidated in the hands of a single family. Thousands of employees across three companies were left wondering what comes next at a time when the future of the entertainment business has rarely been so uncertain.

Even the CEO at the center of the action said he was surprised by the ending.

“We all thought it was going to be Netflix,” Zaslav told staffers in a companywide town hall, adding that the speed of the drama “feels a little whiplashy.”

The deal could take anywhere from six to 18 months to close. Ellison will need to cut a lot of costs to find $6 billion in savings to make the deal work. But that didn’t stop Paramount’s leadership from popping Champagne, which they drank out of paper cups, Thursday afternoon.

Only days earlier Paramount was preparing its next move if it didn’t win. It had a slate of director nominees lined up for a proxy fight and planned to submit them as soon as this past week if Warner refused to accept Paramount’s latest, sweetened offer, according to people familiar with the matter.

Late last Saturday night, Ellison called Zaslav with the structure of the deal that met Warner’s demands. The duo talked again on Sunday and Monday as they scrambled to get as much settled as possible for a Monday midnight deadline to stop talking, people familiar with the matter said. Ellison promised his father would contribute additional funding to satisfy lenders, if needed.”