WBD rejects Paramount takeover bid

Warner Bros. rejected Paramount’s offer of around $20 per share, Bloomberg said.  

Paramount, the parent company of CBS, Nickelodeon, MTV, and the Paramount film studio, is led by David Ellison, the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison. 

David Ellison took over Paramount in August after completing an $8bn merger with his film production company Skydance Media. 

Paramount has been in talks with alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management about backing its bid for rival studio Warner Bros Discovery, Bloomberg News reported. 

News first emerged last month that Paramount was exploring a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Ellison, speaking last week at Los Angeles’ Bloomberg Screentime conference, declined to confirm that his company has bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. But he said that Paramount needed more content to grow in the streaming landscape.  

Ellison said: “You actually need more content to yield more engagement. And so we would actually want to be in the business, through whatever lens we’re looking at” to produce “more movies, more television series”.