As broken by the aforementioned outlet and subsequently reported on by Financial Times and Reuters, Paramount Skydance, fresh off its recent merge, is now in the process of readying a majority cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery.
The bid is explicitly targeting the entire company, including cable networks, film studios such as New Line Cinema, HBO and DC Studios, and will naturally extend to gaming, as WBD heads the division WB Games and owns numerous developers such as NetherRealm Studios (Mortal Kombat, Injustice), Rocksteady (Batman: Arkham) and WB Montreal (Batman: Arkham Origins, Gotham Knights). As Reuters describes, the bid also comes amidst intense pressures for media consolidation that have been prevalent throughout the decade, but have escalated in light of declining TV viewership and rising production costs for television, film and gaming.
Paramount Skydance is also not the first entity to have expressed interest in pursuing such a venture to acquire WBD, as while that merger was in the process of taking place, Sony Pictures was also reportedly interested in absorbing Warner Bros. Streaming and Studios jointly with Apollo right after the former announced their intentions to split into seperate companies again.
Should such a merger take place and be finalized in the near-term, Skydance will add these studios and the broader swath of entertainment licenses that can be leveraged in video games to their portfolio, which already encompasses Skydance New Media, a development team headed by Amy Hennig currently working on AAA action-adventure titles with major third-party licenses. Their first game, Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra, is due early next year.
