They say that the bigger they are, the harder they fall, and when it comes to two media giants trying to buy each other, it’s a long way down from the top. It feels like we're shuffling ever closer to a Wall-E-inspired future where one big company owns everything and the planet is left to ruin. Alien: Earth also touched on this idea with five corporations controlling planet Earth, and while you might think this is all fanciful, is it any coincidence that the Big Five (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft) already have that nickname?
Following Disney's massive acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019, many thought the House of Mouse would remain the biggest entertainment conglomerate around.
Others, like Microsoft purchasing Activision Blizzard King, saw it become a Goliath of the gaming world, but when Warner Bros. Discovery announced it was going under the hammer, there was rightful concern about who would be able to stump up for its impressive catalog of IPs.
Boasting everything from the Wizarding World of Harry Potter to most of J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth, there's also all things DC Comics (including James Gunn's DCU) and the might of HBO Max's stellar cellar of shows.
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In a case of Queen takes King, Netflix has emerged as a frontrunner to shake hands on a reported $72 billion deal that would see the streaming giant take WBD under its wing.
As fans question what will happen next and whether Netflix will do the unthinkable to #RestoretheSnyderverse, President Donald Trump has warned that the deal might pose a problem in terms of antitrust, purely on how much of a market share a Netflix x WBD merger would own.
Speaking as he arrived at the Kennedy Center on December 7, the POTUS suggested that regulators could soon step in, especially considering there will be a lengthy Justice Department review on how this could reshape the entertainment industry: "Well, that’s got to go through a process, and we’ll see what happens. But it is a big market share. It could be a problem.”
The President confirmed he'd met with Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos and that he'd be personally involved in the decision-making process. Trump went on to explain how Netflix already has “a very big market share, and when they have Warner Brothers, you know, that share goes up a lot."
As reported by Futurism, prediction marketplace Polymarket suggests there's only a 23% chance that Netflix will manage to close the deal by the end of 2026, which is already down from an impressive 60% chance before President Trump spoke out.
Elsewhere, Warner Bros. shares climbed by 1% on the Blue Ocean trading platform's early trending, while Netflix dropped 1.4%.
It's said that the Justice Department’s antitrust division could argue that the landmark deal is illegal because Netflix's market share would soar above the proposed 30% threshold.
This comes after Sarandos supposedly 'wooed' Trump before making the bid. The Netflix boss is said to have appealed to the President, who simply said WBD should sell to the highest bidder. The exact details of who bid what are a little murky, although Netflix adding a $5 billion 'kill fee' if it doesn't go through might've pushed the final total to $82.7 billion.
In terms of what happens next, Netflix is expected to argue its case by suggesting that the likes of Alphabet's YouTube and ByteDance's TikTok should be taken into consideration when looking at the 30% threshold, while another point is that 75% of HBO Max subscribers apparently already subscribe to Netflix.
Still, with Netflix's deal leapfrogging one put forward by the Larry Ellison-backed Paramount Skydance Corp., could Trump's ties to the second-richest man in the world also get in the way?