This is why Paramount won't be cutting a deal to break up Warner Bros assets.
Trade publications, irrespective of industry, will often report on the work of analysts who specialise in their chosen fields. Many analysts toil away in anonymity, often, being paid handsomely for their insights. In some industries these analysts become well-known within the broader industry for being well-sourced – Ming-Chi Kuo has become known globally, for example, when it comes to reporting on upcoming Apple hardware thanks to his sources within the supply chain.
A media reporter who will often publish analysts comments to him, often with little consideration as to whether it is smart analysis, is the high-profile Matt Belloni.
In his subscriber email on August 3, 2026, he published “an intriguing scenario that Wolfe Research analyst Peter Supino floated in a client note as an alternative to a long legal battle over the WarnerMount merger. He attributes this to a “senior media executive well-connected to Paramount-Warner”…”
“Paramount takes HBO, offloads Warner to Netflix, and sells the cable networks to private equity. In this deal, Paramount's streaming service vaults forward while its debt is far lower, Netflix gains the I.P. it covets, and opposing arguments about market share fizzle. In such a case, the $7 billion breakup fee to which Paramount has committed means that WBD shareholders would almost certainly get the $31+ [per share] to which they’re currently entitled.”
I’ve heard similar scenarios being floated by analysts and trade reporters alike in recent weeks as the WarnerMount merger starts to look increasingly wobbly. But, give it more than a cursory glance and it makes zero sense.
The value Paramount is placing on this merger is based on:
Control over the deep Warner Bros film and TV library
The IP assets that come with that library
The linear channels, which still turn a greater profit than the streaming business and can be relied upon for a few more years to beef up revenue for the publicly traded company.
Warners is that library. It is that trove of IP.
What is less valuable to Paramount? HBO and its premium TV offer. You know what Paramount already has and does it fairly well? Premium scripted television shows. No, it doesn’t have The Sopranos and Sex & The City in its library, but a deal like this isn’t to pick up aged individual titles like that.
There’s an interesting article at The Hollywood Reporter from earlier this week about the pipeline of original productions being made for the new team at Paramount, under head of originals Jane Wiseman (who reports in to the Direct-to-consumer chair Cindy Holland, ie the woman responsible for the first five years or so of Netflix’s originals strategy).
Paramount originals, under Wiseman and Holland, are pivoting away from the focus on the male-skewed Yellowstone / Taylor Sheridan franchise shows, and are broadening the tent to include a lot more dramas courting female audiences.
Direct-to-consumer chair Cindy Holland, who hired Wiseman, has made no secret of this ambition, telegraphing as much at Paramount’s 2026 upfront presentation. And the focus on female viewers has been on display in series pickups from Wiseman’s team like Discretion, a legal thriller produced by A24 and starring Nicole Kidman and Elle Fanning; Fear Not, a true-crime limited series from MGM Television starring Anne Hathaway; and the sequel to Clueless with Alicia Silverstone. On the unscripted side, Paramount+ recently gave the go-ahead to a dating show from the Love Is Blind production company Kinetic Content (working title: Making Love) and the youth baseball reality series Team Moms from executive producer Kim Kardashian.
Around town, the streamer has been calling for female-fronted adult dramas; romance and family stories; soap opera-type fare; and thrillers that are serialized, say sources. They’re interested in work with major creatives and stars (“They are cost-conscious, although they’re looking for big names to drive marketing,” says a production company exec). The streamer is also dipping its toes in YA stories à la Outer Banks, The Summer I Turned Pretty, Riverdale and its own series School Spirits but seemingly doesn’t want to spend a fortune on these projects (more like $3 million to $5 million an episode), says another agent source.
A broader tent also means other types of dramas:
On the other end of things, the streamer is putting feelers out for “grounded genre” ideas — essentially big-concept genre (sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural) stories with relatable human drama. Wiseman’s hire, executive vp originals Chris Parnell, a former Apple TV creative exec who worked on Pluribus, is spearheading this push, where the streamer is said to be looking for projects along the line of, yes, Pluribus but also Silo, Severance, Fallout and Stranger Things.
This is the sort of strategy you put in place when you’re replicating the success of HBO and Apple TV, but not actively banking on needing HBO to drive your success.
Whether Paramount sinks or swims under David Ellison is really still to be determined, but should it fail it won’t be because of an HBO-sized hole in its structure. Paramount will be doing just fine in that space once the pipeline starts delivering.
Paramount spending billions on HBO is not a key objective for its takeover of Warner Brothers Discovery. What it needs is the film studio. What it needs is the linear channels (inclusive of CNN). Paramount won’t be making deals that will see it walking away from those.
Any analyst should be able to tell you that.
News Desk
Casting & greenlights
It’s everything its fan has been calling for. Fox is reviving Joe Dirt as an animated series 25 years on, with David Spade back voicing the mulleted drifter — now married to Brandy and raising three teenage daughters. Read: Deadline
James Marsden will star in and produce Bad News Dads, an Apple TV comedy from You’re the Worst creator Stephen Falk and Greg Berlanti, about a rec-league ballplayer who ropes his teammates into investigating whether a player’s wife was murdered. Read: Deadline
Snuffed out
Apple has passed on David E. Kelley and Matt Reeves‘ long-gestating adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities after the sides fell out of creative alignment, with Warner Bros. Television now shopping it elsewhere. Read: Deadline
Warnermount passes UK regulation
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority has cleared Paramount Skydance’s roughly $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. on competition and public-interest grounds, after Paramount firmed up commitments on UK programming and news. Read: Variety
Controller corner
Rockstar will premiere a new extended look at Grand Theft Auto VI exclusively on Netflix on 27 August, a full six hours ahead of its official YouTube release and 15 minutes ahead of third-party accounts ripping it and uploading it to YouTube. Read: Polygon
Ubisoft has confirmed the next Ghost Recon is in development after “years” of work, launching a Ghost Recon Insider Program that lets players sign up for early closed tests. Read: Polygon
Islands in the stream
Green Day have launched Green Day TV, a 24/7 YouTube stream of music videos, live sets and unseen archival footage, plus a weekly variety show hosted by Tré Cool. Read: Consequence
In a curious move, the director of Netflix’s sci-fi thriller The Last House filmed it for IMAX projection. Read: Polygon
The cast of The Pitt — led by Noah Wyle as Captain Kirk — will stage a live reading of the classic Star Trek episode “The Man Trap” on 30 August, marking the Writers Guild Foundation’s 60th anniversary. Read: Deadline
Minnie Driver was injured in a car accident in France while shooting the sixth and final season of Emily in Paris, though production has barely shifted — only one of her scenes moved — as she recovers. Read: Deadline
Trailer Park
Madden debuts on Prime Video Nov 18.
Coach. Broadcaster. Innovator. Legend. Nicolas Cage is John Madden.
War debuts on HBO Max Oct 1.
WAR is a high-stakes, legal drama following the lives of London's most powerful lawyers as firms Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne clash over a headline-grabbing legal battle, drawing ambitious young lawyer Jonathan "Johnny" Warren (Archie Renaux) into a ruthless world where ambition is currency, betrayal is strategy, and winning is everything. Season one follows the explosive divorce of British tech entrepreneur Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) and international film star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller), as Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne stop at nothing to secure victory for their clients.
Lion debuts on National Geographic August 13, with all four episoides debuting the next day August 19.
With narration by O.J. Lynch (Mufasa, "The Lion King" stage production), LION brings to life the extraordinary true story of the Maasai Mara's lion kings, queens and a new hero named Kio. Blending Favreau's distinctive storytelling and passion with Gunton's world-class natural history expertise, the ambitious series goes beyond traditional wildlife documentaries to deliver a gripping, blockbuster drama rooted in documentary truth.
Adam’s Law, a daytime court show hosted by Judge Judy’s son, debuts on US syndication Sept 14.
Lovesick debuts on Netflix Sept 2.
During the Mexican Revolution, Emilia Sauri pursues her dream of becoming a doctor, defying convention in search of love, purpose and independence.
Clash of the Thundermans debuts on Paramount+ Sept 3.
Based on the hit Nickelodeon live-action superhero comedy series, "Clash of the Thundermans" follows youngest sibling Chloe as she develops a new and unpredictable superpower, causing the Hero League to demand they send her away to a superhero boarding school to learn to control it.
Jonathan LaPaglia hosts new BINGE eight-part social experiment show Apocalypse. It is coming soon to BINGE in Australia and Channel 4 in the UK.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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