LOS ANGELES - Paramount Skydance, run by pro-Trump technology heir David Ellison, was poised to take control of Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday after Netflix said it would not raise its takeover offer, ending one of the biggest media bidding wars in a generation.
The deal puts a constellation of media properties — from CNN to Nickelodeon to HBO — under the control of the family led by Oracle tycoon and White House ally Larry Ellison.
Netflix said it was "declining to match" Paramount's latest offer after the Warner Bros. board declared it a "Superior Proposal" under the terms of its existing merger agreement with Netflix.
"The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval," Netflix said in a statement.
"However, we've always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance's latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid," it added.
The company insisted it "would have been strong stewards of Warner Bros.' iconic brands, and that our deal would have strengthened the entertainment industry and preserved and created more production jobs in the US.
"But this transaction was always a 'nice to have' at the right price, not a 'must have' at any price," it concluded.
Without a Netflix counteroffer, the Warner Bros. Discovery board is now free to terminate its agreement with the streaming giant and proceed with Paramount.
Warner Bros. shareholders were previously scheduled to vote on the Netflix agreement on March 20. That vote is now essentially moot, and attention shifts to securing shareholder approval for the Paramount deal instead.