Netflix is buying Warner Bros. Discovery
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.8 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 5 December 2025
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Following a fierce bidding war, Netflix announced this morning that it’s buying Warner Bros. Discovery in a deal worth more than $82 billion. The deal still has to be approved by regulators, and some lawmakers are already raising antitrust concerns. We learn more. Then, as part of our lunar economy mini-series, we hear what a lack of private interest oversight could mean for an economy beyond the clouds.
Note: This morning’s podcast has been updated following the official announcement of a Netflix-Warner Bros. deal.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Can a Hollywood studio get too big? |
| 0:05.1 | I'm David Bradcatchio in Los Angeles. There's news this morning that Netflix is buying Warner Brothers Discovery in a deal worth more than $82 billion. |
| 0:14.8 | Today's announcement comes after a fierce bidding war, and there could still be more twists and turns Hollywood-style, as Marketplace's |
| 0:22.2 | Nancy Marshall-Genzor reports. |
| 0:23.8 | Netflix says the deal will close after Warner Brothers Discovery finishes spinning off its cable |
| 0:29.0 | channels, including CNN. Netflix expects this to happen in the third quarter of next year. |
| 0:34.7 | In a nod to Hollywood, Netflix says it expects to maintain |
| 0:38.3 | Warner Brothers' current operations, including theatrical releases for films. Comcast and Paramount |
| 0:44.7 | also wanted to buy Warner Brothers. At one point, Paramount called the bidding process tainted. |
| 0:50.7 | The deal announced this morning still has to be approved by regulators. Some lawmakers are already raising antitrust concerns. |
| 0:58.4 | Republican Congressman Daryl Issa of California wrote a letter to the Justice Department. |
| 1:03.5 | He says if Netflix and Warner Brothers combined, they'd control more than 30% of the streaming market. |
| 1:09.9 | A threshold, he says, is, quote, |
| 1:11.9 | traditionally viewed as presumptively problematic under antitrust law. I'm Nancy Marshall |
| 1:17.8 | Ginsburg for Marketplace. This morning we'll get a reading on inflation, the go-to number for |
| 1:23.6 | the guardians of interest rates at the Federal Reserve. Personal consumption expenditures has that price increase information, |
| 1:30.3 | but the data we get today is kind of moldy cheese. |
| 1:33.9 | It's September's data delayed by the government shutdown. |
| 1:36.9 | The Fed is expected to lower interest rates slightly next week |
| 1:40.0 | at a time that it's especially hard to tell if it's inflation |
| 1:43.2 | or a flagging job market that's the most pressing problem. Orlando, a few weeks ago, the Economist magazine people convened what was called the Space Economy Summit in Houston a few weeks earlier. It was the Lunar and Mars Economy Summit. There's |
| 2:20.8 | no economy on the moon now, but governments and private companies are hard at work to change that. |
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