Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav presented an upbeat take on the company’s new mega-merger with Netflix during a Friday all-hands with employees.
“This is a big day for Warner Bros.,” Zaslav said at a company global town hall, a recording of which was obtained by Business Insider.
Netflix plans to buy the Warner Bros. studio and streaming assets in an industry-shaking $72 billion deal, the companies announced on Friday. WBD’s TV networks like CNN and TNT will be part of a spinoff in mid-2026, as the media conglomerate had originally planned.
WBD’s town hall on Friday afternoon at 1:30 pm ET seemed designed to answer employees’ questions and assuage any fears about the Netflix deal. Zaslav also sent a memo to staffers, several of whom told BI they were worried about their job security as the company undergoes another major deal. That’s especially true because Netflix has its own top-tier tech that could render some of WBD’s obsolete.
“The intention is, they want to keep most people,” Zaslav said of Netflix on the call.
WBD CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels, who will lead Discovery Global after it’s spun off from the main company, said on the call that while the WBD as the world knows it will come to an end, he’s excited for the future.
“It’s an emotional day, I think, for all of us,” Wiedenfels said.
What WBD execs said about the split, bidding war, and sale
Early on the call, Zaslav acknowledged that WBD and its employees had gone through a slew of changes since he engineered a merger between WarnerMedia and Discovery in 2021.
“In the end, we’ve gotten a lot more right than we’ve gotten wrong,” Zaslav said.
The WBD CEO reiterated that the company had planned to split itself before Paramount expressed its interest with an unsolicited offer. As a public company, Zaslav explained that it was executives’ duties to get the best possible offer.
“Our No. 1 focus is to drive shareholder value,” Zaslav said.
As Netflix, Paramount Skydance, and Comcast put forth offers, Zaslav said that the bidding war got noisy.
“It was more public than we would have liked,” Zaslav said of the bidding process.
WBD employees should be flattered by the interest from Netflix and other companies, Zaslav said.
“They wanted to figure out how to get into business with all of you,” Zaslav said of WBD’s suitors. He also said there may be more noise ahead, so “put your seatbelts on.”
In the end, WBD executives told employees that they took the best offer on the table.
“Netflix is an exceptional company,” Zaslav said. “I think it has a great, sustainable future.”
As Netflix incorporates HBO Max content, Zaslav said that “more people will be getting nourished” by HBO and Warner Bros. content.
Netflix execs also explained their views on the deal
After announcing its blockbuster deal on Friday, Netflix also moved to answer questions from Wall Street analysts, investors, employees, movie-theater owners, and government regulators.
Here’s what Greg Peters, the Netflix co-CEO, said about the deal on a call with analysts: “This acquisition will allow us to significantly expand our production capacity in the United States and keep investing in original content over the long term. That means more opportunities for creative talent; it means more jobs created across the entire entertainment industry.”
This story is developing and will be updated.
