Paramount Skydance’s hiring of Makan Delrahim was the easy part.
Now the media giant’s CEO David Ellison is hoping his new super lawyer can entice David Zaslav to sell most if not all of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The Post has learned that since taking the job last week, Delrahim — who was the Justice Department’s antitrust chief during the first Trump administration — is fast at work plotting a strategy to get Zas to bite on a bid from Ellison.
The pitch goes something like this: If Zas doesn’t sell to Ellison, he may find himself with a Shari Redstone-like future.
Recall that Skydance just purchased Redstone’s media empire Paramount — which includes fading properties like CBS, Comedy Central, MTV and a mid-tier Hollywood studio — for a mere $8 billion because the heiress bit the bullet and sold only after it was too late.
Delrahim, of course, is no dummy — he’s maybe the best-positioned media dealmaker given his ties to the White House.
His problem is that Zas also is no dummy. And Warner Bros. Discovery, known in media and Wall Street circles simply as WBD, isn’t Paramount.
Just before Ellison — backed by dad Larry Ellison, the Oracle tycoon who is now the second-richest person in the world — reportedly signaled that he wanted another trophy property in WBD, Zas hired bankers at Goldman Sachs to start shopping it.
There is interest and for good reason: While Zas has taken heat for a sluggish stock price and getting paid a lot of money, industry insiders are quietly recognizing the good things he’s done.
Solid box office
Warner Bros. studio has cranked out a host of big box-office draws; it’s the first studio to earn $4 billion at the box office so far this year, HBO Max is profitable and popular; its subscriber growth made it the third largest streamer.
Zas has been chipping away at the debt used to make the TimeWarner deal work.
He’s been separating cable channels like CNN from streaming and the studio, which would make things easier to sell, particularly the streaming and studio unit since it will have almost no debt.
People close to Zas say Goldman has received interest from some formidable new players — Netflix, Amazon and even Apple among them — for the streaming and studios part of the business and at levels above what the Ellisons have leaked.
“If the Ellisons want this, they better bring cash and a lot of it,” said one person who knows Zaslav well.
Zas scoffed at a leak to CNBC that Ellison is preparing $22 to $24 a share for all of WBD.
“Zaslav wants well north of that, somewhere in the $30 range and just for the streaming and studio,” this person added.
That’s where Delrahim comes in.
According to his pitch, apart from Paramount Skydance there are only two possible suitors for WBD: Netflix and Amazon.
Netflix is already the No. 1 streaming service; combining it with the No. 3 service will face hurdles even from the more deal-friendly Trump regulatory cops.
Consent decree
Ditto for Amazon, which bought MGM Studios in 2022.
It’s also under a consent decree with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that it screwed consumers when they signed up for its Amazon Prime.
Delrahim believes — or will tell Zas he believes — the consent decree adds yet another stumbling block for an Amazon deal, with the FTC being the most hazardous.
(There’s also FCC, DOJ antitrust and God knows what else.)
And if Zas is banking on a bid from Apple, he shouldn’t hold his breath; the iPhone maker is looking for content but looking to build it organically.
This is why there’s near radio silence from the Ellisons.
Lots of meetings are taking place in Skydance land on just how to proceed with Zas.
(By the time you’re reading this, the bid may have already been made.)
As reported, Delrahim might ask John Malone — aka “The Cable Cowboy,” a mercurial dealmaker who is a major shareholder in WBD — to directly make the pitch.
Their problem: This ain’t Zas’s first rodeo — and Malone is among his mentors.
Zaslav was a also was a protégé of Jack Welch when General Electric owned NBCUniversal.
Zas knows balance sheets and he knows how to do deals. Otherwise, his relatively small Discovery Inc. wouldn’t have managed its 2022 mega-merger with TimeWarner to create WBD.
In other words, maybe it’s possible that he and Goldman can convince the Trump administration to greenlight deals for Netflix and Amazon, or Apple finally wants to buy something — and Ellison can kiss that $22-a-share bid goodbye.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
