On the same day that Warner Bros. rejected Paramount’s $108 billion hostile bid for the company, CEO David Zaslav welcomed Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters to the famed Warner Bros. Studio,

Interviews with dozens of actors, producers and camera crews reveal an industry attempting to weigh the lesser of two horrible choices.

Warner Bros. Discovery is urging shareholders to reject a hostile buyout bid from Paramount Skydance and stick with the $72 billion Netflix offer Warner agreed to earlier this month.

Warner’s board said that Paramount had “consistently misled” shareholders by claiming that its offer had been fully backstopped by the Ellison family.

Netflix would also gain access to a trove of lucrative intellectual property, from Bugs Bunny and Superman to “Friends” and “Game of Thrones.” The closest modern parallel might be Amazon’s acquisition of the former Hollywood power player Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2023.

Paramount fired back that the Ellison family did provide the needed guarantees and pointed to Larry Ellison's long business record. Paramount said it would continue with its hostile takeover of Warner.

"Everyone's just like, 'how is David Zaslav going to make so much money when he ran the company into the ground?'" says a studio executive. "The unjustness of that, when all these people are going to be out of work—it should be illegal.

The real story of the fight for Warner Bros. Discovery is viewers shifting from studios to tech platforms, impacting how and what you watch.

Several Hollywood unions, including the Writers Guild of America and Teamsters, have expressed serious concerns over a potential sale of Warner Bros. Discovery or its assets to Netflix or Paramount.