Yesterday, the news broke that Warner Bros. Discovery is for sale after all, with a statement from CEO David Zaslav acknowledging that the company is weighing-up offers, with "multiple parties" said to have shown interest.
Though none of these supposed interested parties were named, the trades seemed fairly confident that Comcast and Netflix were among them, and - not too surprisingly - the latter piqued the interest of a certain contingent of DC fans.
Despite "rumors" that Zaslav and fellow WBD execs might be considering firing James Gunn, DC Studios and its slate of movies and TV shows are unlikely to be impacted by any potential sale or merger. However, the news that Netflix might be interested in purchasing the company gave the #RestoreTheSnyderVerse crowd hope that Zack Snyder might return to the fold.
The Man of Steel and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice director's initial deal with Netflix has now expired, but he is still working on a number of projects for the streamer. Over the past week or so, he has also taken to his new Instagram account to share some previously-unseen photos from his time in the DCEU, which many have taken as a sign that some kind of announcement might be imminent.
This never seemed very likely, and Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos is now claiming that the streamer has "little interest" in purchasing WBD, anyway.
“Nothing is a must for us to meet our goals that we have for this business,” he said during an after-market analyst call (via THR). “When it comes to M&A opportunities, we look at them, and we look at all of them, and we apply the same framework and lens that we look at when we look to invest. Is it a big opportunity? Is there additional value in ownership.”
“None of those mergers were a fundamental shift in the competitive landscape, and we have also seen a wide range of outcomes from such mergers. So watching some of our competitors potentially get bigger via M&A does not change in and of itself, at least our view of the competitive landscape.”
“We’re predominantly focused on growing organically, investing aggressively and responsibly into the growth and returning access cash flow to shareholders,” he added. “We’ve been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks, so there is no change there. But in general, we believe that we can be and we will be choosy.”
So, little interest... but not zero interest! If Netflix really had no intention whatsoever of a potential purchase of at least some of WBD's assets, something tells us Sarandos' statement would have been a lot more definitive.
Even if Netflix does wind up making some kind of deal with WBD, it's difficult to imagine Snyder being involved with any future DC-based projects - Elseworlds or otherwise - but never say never.