By India McCarty
Netflix co-chief CEO Ted Sarandos spoke out for the first time since news broke that the streamer lost the bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
“It’ll be fascinating to see the next steps,” he told Bloomberg, calling the situation “unusual” and “irrational.”
Sarandos continued, “I have been on the record a lot in the last two weeks talking about what I think the future looks like. I’m confident in our future that we’re not impacted by all that. In fact, maybe it’s to our advantage. But I hope I’m wrong for the sake of the industry.”
“We had a very tight range that we’d be willing to pay and made that offer back when we closed this deal,” he explained of why the proposed deal between Netflix and WBD fell through. “We hadn’t moved much from that, except for moving to cash, which served to move the deal faster. I’m happy where we got in and happy where we got out. We knew right away, when we got the notice on Thursday that they had a superior offer and the details of that deal. We knew exactly what we were going to do.”
Related: Paramount Offers Big Bucks in New Deal to Snatch Warner Bros. Discovery from Netflix
Last week, Netflix officially announced they were withdrawing from the deal, declining to raise their offer.
“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” the streamer said in a statement. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”
Ultimately, Warner Bros. Discovery decided to sell itself to Paramount for $31 a share in cash in a deal worth $110 billion.
“I’m very pleased with the outcome we achieved for WBD shareholders and the entertainment industry,” WBD CEO David Zaslav said, per Deadline. “Our guiding principle throughout this process has been to secure a transaction that maximizes the value of our iconic assets and our century-old studio while delivering as much certainty as possible for our investors. We look forward to working with Paramount to complete this historic transaction.”
Paramount CEO David Ellison added, “From the very beginning, our pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery has been guided by a clear purpose: to honor the legacy of two iconic companies while accelerating our vision of building a next-generation media and entertainment company. By bringing together these world-class studios, our complementary streaming platforms, and the extraordinary talent behind them, we will create even greater value for audiences, partners and shareholders — and we couldn’t be more excited for what’s ahead.”
It will be interesting to see how this deal impacts the entertainment industry.
Read Next: These Entertainment Giants Battle for Warner Bros. Discovery
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