Paramount Skydance‘s top lawyer claims Netflix is so worried about the prospect of competing with a merged Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery that the streaming company is going all-out to try to “poison regulators and other stakeholders” against the pending $111 billion deal.
Netflix clinched a deal to buy Warner Bros.’s streaming and studios businesses in late 2025 before backing out of the bidding in February after Paramount upped its takeout offer for all of WBD.
Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer, has alleged that Netflix is lobbying hard against Paramount’s proposed Warner Bros. Discovery deal. In a June 5 letter to lawyers in the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, Delrahim wrote that “Netflix’s panic-level response and scorched-earth campaign to try and poison regulators and other stakeholders against the Transaction shows just how seriously Netflix takes Paramount as a scaled competitor.”
Delrahim was writing in response to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters’ white paper submitted to the Justice Department in March, in which the union urged the agency to block the Paramount-WBD merger unless Paramount agreed to “substantial and enforceable safeguards” against job cuts and supporting increased U.S. production.
