The Trump administration views the proposed $72 billion deal for Netflix to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery‘s film and streaming assets with “heavy skepticism,” a senior administration official told CNBC’s Eamon Javers on Friday morning.
Netflix said Friday that it would acquire Warner Bros.’s film studio and streaming service, HBO Max.
Paramount Skydance had made multiple bids for all of WBD.
The New York Post on Thursday reported that, “Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison met with Trump officials and key lawmakers in Washington DC on Wednesday to press his case against Warner Bros. Discovery’s potential selection of Netflix as its merger partner.”
Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, is close to President Donald Trump.
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Paramount, in a letter to lawyers for WBD, had warned that a sale to Netflix likely would “never close” because of regulatory challenges both in the United States and overseas.
“Acquiring Warner’s streaming and studio assets ‘will entrench and extend
Netflix’s global dominance in a matter not allowed by domestic or foreign competition laws,’ Paramount’s lawyers wrote,” the Journal reported.
Correction: A senior administration official said the Trump administration views the deal with ‘heavy skepticism.’ A previous version mischaracterized the official.
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