Paramount’s hunt for WBD made Zaslav richer — and it may not be over
Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison speaks during the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles on October 9, 2025.
Patrick T. Fallon | Afp | Getty Images
This isn’t exactly what David Ellison had planned in September.
Just a few months ago, the Paramount Skydance CEO sent a letter to the Warner Bros. Discovery board of directors arguing a combination of the two media and entertainment companies made sense. That letter was the first of several that offered increasingly higher prices to acquire the company along with arguments of why the assets were better together.
Paramount’s interest spurred a formal sale process — bringing Comcast and Netflix into the mix — which ultimately doubled the value of Warner Bros. Discovery shares and culminated, at least for the moment, in Paramount losing out in the bidding war it started.
On Friday, Netflix announced a deal to acquire HBO Max and the famed Warner Bros. film studio for $27.75 per share, or an equity value of $72 billion. WBD will move forward with a plan to separate out its pay-TV networks, such as CNN and TNT Sports, before the deal closes.
Instead of supercharging Paramount, just months after gaining control of the company through a merger with Skydance, Ellison effectively handed a prized jewel of the media and entertainment industry to its most dominant player, strengthening Netflix’s reach and stripping Paramount and Comcast’s NBCUniversal of an obvious merger target.
“It wasn’t for sale before, and they certainly hadn’t cleaned up the assets or separated the assets in the way they have right now,” said Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos in a conference call Friday morning after announcing the deal. “I think that kind of goes to the ‘why now.'”
Ellison jump-started a process that has made a lot of money for Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, WBD’s executive team and its shareholders.
Zaslav’s share
Zaslav currently owns more than 4.2 million shares of Warner Bros. Discovery, with another 6.2 million shares that would be delivered to him in the future via previously granted stock awards, according to Equilar. Zaslav also has a grant of almost 20.9 million options with an exercise price of $10.16, Equilar found.
Based on the Netflix-WBD transaction price of $27.75 per share, all of that adds up to more than $554 million for the WBD CEO.
Factoring in another 4 million shares that Zaslav is set to receive in January, according to a person close to the situation who declined to be named speaking about the executive’s holdings, the true total is closer to $660 million.
For shareholders, the sale process has brought a similar windfall. Warner Bros. Discovery stock closed at $12.54 on Sept. 10, the day before The Wall Street Journal reported Paramount was preparing a bid for the company.
On Friday morning, Warner Bros. Discovery shares were up almost 3% to more than $25 apiece. That’s more than double Warner Bros. Discovery’s unaffected sale process price and a return to 2022 levels when…
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