The Warner Bros. ownership sweepstakes seemed to reach the end of the beginning last night as Bloomberg broke the news that Netflix had entered into talks to acquire the legendary studio.
Netflix was one of three bidders; the other two included the telecom Comcast, owner of NBCUniversal, and Paramount, itself recently acquired by Skydance Media’s David Ellison. The Netflix offer is only for the studio, including HBO Max. As planned, WB’s cable channels including CNN, TBS and (most worryingly in this household) Turner Classic Movies will still be spun off to another buyer.
I’m sure tomorrow’s news, social media posts and pundits will be consumed with analyzing this move, which would reshape the entertainment world forever, but I’ll cut to the chase for Beat readers: what does it mean for DC Comics?
The deal itself has many hurdles to overcome – looming largest, government concerns over antitrust violations, although they didn’t seem too concerned about Paramount acquiring another studio, especially after the pot got sweetened by the promise of Rush Hour 4.
Evidently WB head David Zaslav and company were not as swayed by the appeal of Chris Tucker coming out of retirement, but preferred Netflix’s $28 a share offer, reportedly including a $5 billion breakup fee if the deal doesn’t go through.
Honestly, maybe just selling to a company that can throw around $5 billion like petty cash is all the answer you need for why they went with Netflix.
Anyway, back to our central question. There’s no doubt that the success (finally!) of Superman greatly raised the value of the DC IP library in the halls of Warner Bros. Zaslav spoke glowingly of DC Studios and James Gunn/Peter Safran in his recent earnings calls. Netflix loves successful movies, so it seems counterintuitive that they would cut off this boffo relaunch of DC as a movie brand just as it’s getting going. I rate them getting rid of Gunn/Safran as unlikely in the short term.
On the other hand, perhaps the main reason that Netflix is buying WB is to remove another rival to staying at home to chill. The philosophical battle over releasing films in non-home theaters is currently playing out with Wake Up Dead Man, Rian Johnson’s third Benoit Blanc movie. After a one week run in art house theaters, you’ll find it only on Netflix starting today. Filmmakers have been chafing against Netflix’s no theaters method for a while. Del Toro’s Frankenstein got a whole three weeks. And god bless Greta Gerwig for insisting on a theatrical opening for her Narnia reboot for two weeks.
On the OTHER other hand, acquiring Warner Bros. would give Netflix something it doesn’t have, as I alluded to just the other day when talking about Stranger Things: a whole glorious library of majestic, beloved IP. And certainly, DC Comics is a huge, sparkling gem encrusted section of that library.
Netflix is obviously no stranger to content based on comics: The Umbrella Academy, Sandman, The End of the F****** World, The Old Guard. Then there was the whole Millarworld business way back in the day, but that didn’t amount to much. Back around that time there were rumors of Netflix starting its own line of comics, but ultimately they made a deal with Dark Horse instead, which has mainly resulted in a steady stream of Stranger Things comics.
Just based on my own observations over the Netflix Era, I would say they are not that interested in publishing. And DC Comics itself remains a strange little appendix in the larger studio system. Back when Time Warner had a whole publishing company right in its name, DC always stayed with the movie studio, avoiding getting sold off. There’s a whole complicated reason for this that deserves its own examination, but I’ll leave that for another time.
DC Comics has also been tossed around like a chew toy left at the dog park during the whole miserable saga of WB’s own acquisition history, from the disaster of AT&T to the uncertain days of the Zaslav/Discovery regime. Probably the one thing DC had going for it through all of this was, oddly enough, the massive success of the MCU over at Disney. With the superheroes across the street (literally) sitting atop the entertainment world, whoever owned WB was set on making sure their own superhero universe got a shot at capturing the same audience. With that in mind, DC Comics couldn’t get killed completely, although some executives did their best to whittle it down to a skeleton crew, and moved it to an office they had to share with animation.
That said, in recent days, I’m told DC Comics is held in high esteem within the halls of Zaslav world. Certainly their appearance at this year’s NYCC – from Jim Lee’s fiery anti-AI speech to the huge, impressive mural in their booth, to the fact that they had a booth at all – showed a lot of confidence in the division.
At any rate, it will probably take a year for this deal to go through – IF it even goes through. Will the James Gunn DC film reboot remain a winner? Will Lanterns be a hit? IF they are still riding high when the deal goes through, DC Comics won’t be the first WB division cut.
But we’re living in the Netflix Era. With a $438 billion market cap, they are the biggest player in entertainment, they are very good at what they do, and they don’t have to change a thing for anyone. The entire movie going experience is fighting for its very survival, and Netflix remains committed to its home streaming strategy because that’s just what they do. How will controlling IP, licensing and even a tiny comic book publishing business fit into that strategy?
The answer to that lies months or years in the future. But it will certainly be fascinating to watch.
My own gut level feeling? As long as movies, series and animation based on DC Comics characters make money, DC Comics, the idea factory, will have a place doing something somewhere. But by the time this deal is finalized, after the dust settles, we might have an incredibly different landscape for publishing itself.
There’s tons more to think about – what will happen to HBO Max? What will happen to HBO? If you’re reading this in the morning, surely you’re being bombarded with similar essays attempting to answer those questions. We’ll keep you updated with the news and speculation as it happens.
DC unlimited with my Netflix sub? Dare I dream?
Or some suit will have the bright idea of scrapping those pesky dead trees for pixels…
Same as Marvel Comics, they are both IP farms with very little else to offer. For a long time, the people in charge there hardly had any clue of what to do with some of the greatest characters and stories in popular literature. The meh productions from Gunn so far are not going to convince me otherwise.
Side note : is the above image available as a poster somewhere ?
“The meh productions from Gunn so far”
Still mad about Jimmy Olsen having more rizz than you, or David Corenswet having more charisma in his finger than you do in your entire body Tommy, JC, or whatever handle you’re using today?
Imagine not knowing how to use reverse image search too.
How do you write this article without mentioning Netflix’s antipathy for physical media? This is BAD NEWS for comic shops.
Anyway, I’m more interested in what this means for BOOM! and Dark Horse, who both have first-look deals with Netflix. I imagine even less of their books will become projects for the service, now that they have DC IPs, which Netflix will own outright, to compete with.
Well, how do you use reverse image?
“Still mad about Jimmy Olsen having more rizz than you, or David Corenswet having more charisma in his finger than you do in your entire body Tommy, JC, or whatever handle you’re using today?”
Dude, with all due respect (and I do respect your writing and your helpful follow-ups in comments), this is a bit of an overreaction to someone saying they don’t like a movie that you like.
Forgive me, I’m trying my best with him.
He once left the most disgustingly misogynistic comment about Milly Alcock’s Supergirl, among other bigoted comments.
“Side note : is the above image available as a poster somewhere ?”
That image is a variant cover to New History of the DC Universe #1. There are similar images for the other issues, representing the eras covered in them. I’m not aware that any of them have been made available as posters yet.
“Well, how do you use reverse image?”
There’s a little camera icon on the right side of the Google search bar. If you click it, you will be able to upload an image, crop it to the area you want to search for, and search for similar images on the Internet.
If this deal were to go through and Netflix dissolved DC Comics, I assume that would be a death blow to the direct market. But if Netflix dissolved DC and chose to license the characters to another publisher like Dark Horse, would that be enough to keep comic shops alive? I imagine Disney would be too much of a rival to Netflix for them to even consider licensing the DC characters to Marvel Comics.
Netflix has no interest in publishing but licensing is a cash cow. I firmly believe that they would license out the characters, just as Disney/Marvel is already doing.
@Christopher – I also have an extremely low tolerance for nonsense like that so now I understand where you’re coming from.
@Heidi – Perhaps I don’t understand correctly but Marvel is still a successful publishing house. If Netflix follows the “Disney/Marvel” route, wouldn’t they just leave DC alone to do its thing and generate more IP to license?
“Perhaps I don’t understand correctly but Marvel is still a successful publishing house. If Netflix follows the “Disney/Marvel” route, wouldn’t they just leave DC alone to do its thing and generate more IP to license?”
What makes you think they’ll do that Carter? Netflix seems to really hate physical media and theatrical releases. They barely release any of their films or TV shows to disc and the theatrical runs are token ones to make the directors they work with happy. Are they going to care as much about Mark Waid as they do Rian Johnson
Netflix has the largest market cap of any company solely devoted to entertainment, but they’re not even close to Apple, Amazon, or Google. People don’t realize that while it doesn’t produce content, YouTube vastly overwhelms Netflix in streaming. More content is uploaded to YouTube each day than is in Netflix’s whole library.
“Netflix has no interest in publishing but licensing is a cash cow. I firmly believe that they would license out the characters, just as Disney/Marvel is already doing.”
The same Netflix that won’t let discs get printed of Glass Onion or GLOW? Sure, Heidi.
FYI, Heidi, Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man premieres next Friday (Dec. 12th) on Netflix, not today. (Just wanted to head all those Beat readers who were suddenly rushing to their Netflix app tonight to watch the movie.)
That said, I completely agree with you: both 1 week and 2 weeks seems to me like way too little time between theater release and streaming release dates.
@Joe
1) I didn’t say that I thought Netflix is going to leave DC alone. I said “If Netflix follows the Disney/Marvel route,” which is a hypothetical that Heidi brought up. Following that scenario DC, like Marvel, will continue to successfully publish comics.
2) Since you brought it up, I do think Netflix will mostly (no reorganization leaves things untouched) leave DC alone. Every few years, WB gets sold or reorganized. Every few years, there are Is-this-the-end-of-DC panic stories. Every few years, it is not the end of DC. Is this the time that DC gets shut down? Maybe. I don’t know the future. History says, “probably not”.
Netflix “hating physical media” is not a legitimate business plan. Netflix wants you sitting at home, streaming their service. If you are sitting in a theater, you are not using their service. If you are watching a DVD, you are not using their service. It’s hard to translate this to comics. If Netflix shuts down production of physical comics, they’ll only do so if it makes them more money. If they switch to only digital comics, then DC is still producing the same product but without the paper (I’m against this, for the record, so don’t @ me about it like I’m advocating for it). Alternately, as Heidi suggests, they could license the entire line to someone else but this seems extreme. Who could handle DC comics as well as DC Comics could? It’d be the destruction of a 90 year old brand.
A possible wrinkle to this hypothetical is Wonder Woman. My understanding (possibly wrong or outdated) is that DC is obligated to print a monthly WW comic or the rights revert back to the Marston estate. The money DC makes from licensing WW beach towels and the like could probably fund all of DC’s operating costs.
Netflix would be crazy not to offer a bundle subscription that includes Netflix and DC Universe Infinite/Ultra together at a discounted price from what they cost separately. I actually don’t see a post acquisition world where something like that doesn’t happen.
“Netflix “hating physical media” is not a legitimate business plan. Netflix wants you sitting at home, streaming their service. If you are sitting in a theater, you are not using their service. If you are watching a DVD, you are not using their service.”
Given royalties they have to keep track of and pay out if I actually use their service, their best business model is me paying for their service and not using it.
Netflix’s value as a streaming service comes from a combination of novelty (which wears off) and a deep catalog. Once novelty wears off the best thing for them to do is make additional money from the catalog by producing physical media. They are by far the worst of the major studios at monetizing their catalog.
Speaking of that deep catalog, a couple days before the sale, they lost their license with WB for a particularly popular part of it:
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/dec/03/friends-fans-outraged-as-the-sitcom-leaves-netflix
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