Malone says Trump administration warned Netflix its Warner Bros. bid was dead

John Malone, the cable industry veteran and a former Warner Bros. Discovery director, said this week that the Trump administration privately told Netflix it had no realistic chance of winning regulatory approval to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, a warning he described as the decisive factor in Netflix's withdrawal from the bidding war that Paramount Skydance ultimately won. Malone made the remarks on Wednesday at the Paley International Council Summit in Manhattan, as first reported by Deadline.

"They were right on the verge of pressing on," Malone said of Netflix, "and were told by the administration that they had no chance" of regulatory approval. He added: "I think that that was really the spike that got 'em."

A message delivered behind closed doors

Malone, who stepped down from Warner Bros. Discovery's board and remains one of the company's largest individual shareholders, did not describe who delivered the message to Netflix or in what form, and he offered no documentary evidence for the claim. His account was corroborated in substance, though not in detail, by separate write-ups from The A.V. Club and Benzinga, both of which cited the same remarks at the Paley gathering.

Netflix's version of events differs. Co-chief executive Ted Sarandos has said President Trump was "completely neutral" throughout the process and that Netflix walked away from the bidding because Paramount's offer had simply become more attractive financially. Sarandos met with administration officials at the White House in late February, hours before Netflix confirmed it would not match Paramount's revised bid.

How the bidding war ended

The dispute centers on the final days of a monthslong contest for control of Warner Bros. Discovery. Netflix had reached an amended merger agreement with Warner Bros. Discovery on January 19, 2026, according to a securities filing made by the company. On February 26, Netflix declined to raise its offer further, and the next day Warner Bros. Discovery's board terminated the Netflix agreement, calling Paramount Skydance's proposal a "Company Superior Proposal," and signed a new merger agreement with Paramount Skydance. Under that agreement, Paramount Skydance paid Netflix a $2.8 billion termination fee on Warner Bros. Discovery's behalf, separate from the price it ultimately paid Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.

Paramount Skydance's winning offer valued Warner Bros. Discovery stock at $31.00 a share in cash, a 147 percent premium over the company's unaffected closing price of $12.54 before deal speculation began, according to a Warner Bros. Discovery proxy filing. Depending on how outstanding debt is counted, news organizations have put the transaction's total value at anywhere from roughly $81 billion to about $111 billion. Financing came substantially from the family of Skydance chief executive David Ellison: his father, Oracle co-founder and major Trump donor Larry Ellison, guaranteed tens of billions of dollars of the merger consideration through a revocable trust, the filing shows.

The deal closed on October 6, after clearing the remaining regulatory and legal hurdles. The Justice Department closed its antitrust review without imposing conditions in June. The Federal Communications Commission's Media Bureau granted Paramount a waiver in September allowing Gulf sovereign-wealth funds to hold a large non-voting equity stake in the combined company. A coalition of a dozen state attorneys general, led by California, had sued in July to block the merger on competition grounds; those states settled with Paramount Skydance in September, as did the Writers Guild of America, which had filed its own suit. Warner Bros. Discovery's stock stopped trading on Nasdaq, and the merged company began trading on the New York Stock Exchange as "Skydance."

Scrutiny that outlasted the deal

Malone's comments add a prominent voice to questions that congressional Democrats raised months before the deal closed. In a March 2 letter, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Richard Blumenthal and Representative Sam Liccardo pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles for details of a meeting between Sarandos and administration officials that took place, the lawmakers wrote, "hours before" Netflix pulled out of the bidding. The lawmakers' letter asked whether officials "used the closed-door meeting" to discourage Netflix's bid so that Paramount Skydance, led by the son of a Trump ally, could prevail. The White House, the Justice Department and Netflix did not respond to requests for comment on the letter at the time, according to the lawmakers' release.

Those questions carry weight beyond Netflix and Paramount. Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders who tendered their shares at $31 apiece, the journalists and executives whose jobs now sit inside a reorganized Skydance, and the rival bidders who dropped out all have a stake in whether the sale process was shaped by regulatory pressure rather than ordinary dealmaking. Malone, for his part, said Wednesday that Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders would "have liked to have seen" Netflix prevail but that the final outcome was "more than sufficient" financially regardless of which buyer won.

"They were right on the verge of pressing on, and were told by the administration that they had no chance. I think that that was really the spike that got 'em."

What happens next

No government body has confirmed Malone's account, and the senators' March letter has not produced a public response from the Justice Department or the White House that resolves the question of what, if anything, officials told Sarandos. Netflix has not commented on Malone's specific remarks. The Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery deal is already closed and cannot be undone by the dispute, but Malone's comments are likely to renew pressure on lawmakers and on Netflix and the administration to clarify what was actually communicated during the final days of the bidding war, particularly given Malone's standing as a Warner Bros. Discovery insider with direct knowledge of how the sale process unfolded.