A merger between streaming services Discovery+ and Paramount+ could be on the cards after it emerged executives at Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount have held exploratory merger talks.
Its understood Warner Bros. Discovery chief executive David Zaslav and Paramount chief Bob Bakish discussed a possible deal during a lunch held at Paramount’s offices in New York earlier this week.
Sources familiar with the situation described the talks as being at an early stage, with no guarantee that any deal would come to fruition.
Shari Redstone, the daughter of the late Sumner Redstone who now controls Paramount, is known to have held separate talks with Skydance, the production company behind Paramount’s recent hit Top Gun: Maverick.
Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount Global have both emerged from recent corporate mergers. WBD was formed from the combination of the media assets of AT&T’s Warner Media and Discovery Inc on April 8, 2022.
Paramount Global was formed in 2019 through the merger of Viacom and CBS and was renamed Paramount Global in 2022.
The two studios are heavily in debt after spending heavily on the launch of their respective streaming services.
Any combination would bring together HBO, Max, Paramount+, Showtime, Cartoon Network, MTV, CBS News and CNN.
