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Hollywood by becoming a puck member today. It is Monday, December 1st. We're in kind of a weird place with the ongoing

sale of the studio conglomerate Warner Brothers Discovery. Our guy, David Zazlov, the CEO,

an architect of this fire sale, or split, whichever comes first, he set a deadline of today

for suitors to submit sweetened bids after the first round of offers a couple weeks ago.

Those bidders, remember it's paramount for all of the company and Comcast and Netflix for just the Warner Studio and HBO Max.

They're now operating on two separate tracks, the deal makers, the lawyers and bankers and other strategists.

They're now furiously working up their bids and doing meetings with Zazlov and his team to pitch their version of a deal.

And separately, these spin doctors are out there, trying to get a narrative going in the media about which of these suitors will pass regulatory muster and get approved, or even lobbying the government directly, I'm told.

Netflix is the leader in streaming.

They'll never be allowed to buy HBO Max, the narrative goes.

Or Trump hates Comcast, so good luck there, guys.

Larry Ellison is buddies with Trump, the other narrative goes,

but regulators overseas will punish him for that,

hearing a lot on all sides of this potential deal. And amid all the

jockeying, we got a very interesting media leak last week to Lucas Shaw, a guy from Bloomberg.

He reported that Netflix, in its pitch to Warner, had pledged to keep releasing movies in theaters.

That's interesting, of course, because Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is considered the enemy of movie

theaters. He won't honor a robust theatrical window, so the major chains won't play Netflix

titles. The assumption has been that Netflix would just shut down Warner's as a theatrical

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