Netflix knew "right away" that they were withdrawing from Warner Bros. bake-off

In a new interview, co-CEO Ted Sarandos explains that as soon as Paramount's "superior offer" came through, he was pulling out of the running.

By Matt Schimkowitz | March 2, 2026 | 7:31pm

Screenshot: YouTube

Film News Warner Bros. Discovery

There was never going to be a consensus popular winner of the Warner Bros. bake-off. On the one side, you had Netflix, which has spent decades pulling movies away from theaters and onto smaller screens; on the other, the Ellisons’ big-studio buy-up that has already diminished one storied news network at a time when news media is struggling to keep up with the fresh hell blooming by the hour. So when the debt-riddled leaders of Paramount swooped in with a ludicrous $111 billion offer, backed by Skydance CEO David Ellison’s father, to buy the debt-riddled Warner Bros. Discovery, the only person who seems happy about the result is Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who picked up a cool $2.8 billion in the process. (For the record, he says, “There are easier ways to make $2.8 billion,” which we’d love to hear about, Ted). In a new interview with Business Insider, Sarandos explains that they knew as soon as the Ellison offer came in that Netflix was withdrawing. “We had a very tight range that we’d be willing to pay and made that offer back when we closed this deal,” Sarandos says. “We hadn’t moved much from that, except for moving to cash, which served to move the deal faster. I’m happy where we got in and happy where we got out. We knew right away, when we got the notice on Thursday, that they had a superior offer and the details of that deal.”

Sarandos says that the company had done “all the scenario planning” and knew “what we wanted to do” without the need to go back to the board. “There was a lot of uncertainty in their financing. What would they be willing to do on price? Would they close all those other issues, but not raise the price?” he continued. “Once they did what I probably didn’t expect, which was the personal guarantee for a $111 billion deal—it’s pretty unprecedented—that was clear to us. They had taken all the other issues off the table, and then they additionally raised the price.”

The experience gave him a first-hand look at the regulatory hurdles to acquiring an asset like WB and even gave him a chance to reconsider his relationship with movie theaters, a big sticking point in the public’s backlash to Netflix’s offer. Having an “open dialogue with the theater owners,” after years of comments about how “outmoded” movie theaters were, allowed Sarandos and the theaters to work together after years of animosity. “We’ve figured out some really creative things to do together like you saw with Stranger Things and KPop Demon Hunters. We have One Piece in theaters next week in the US and Japan. I think we’re gonna find a bunch of cool things to do together going forward.” That might help Sarandos in the long run. After all, buying and selling Warner Bros. is a time-honored tradition within the realm of mergers and acquisitions, so there may be a time sooner than later that Sarandos gets a crack at buying the studio.

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