A huge battle is forming in Hollywood after Paramount chief David Ellison launched a new bid to acquire Warner Bros Discovery. His effort has now kicked off a full bidding war, drawing interest from Comcast and Netflix as all three companies look to grab one of the most famous studios in the world.

Ellison, the 42-year-old son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has already made three offers since the fall. Now he’s back with a fourth attempt to buy the entire company. His move comes only a short time after he closed an $8 billion deal to take over Paramount through Skydance, his much smaller media company.

Warner Bros Discovery CEO David Zaslav turned down earlier bids, but in October the company officially started looking for buyers. That opened the door for two major rivals. The first being Comcast, which owns NBC, and the second as Netflix, which is exploring the idea even though it rarely makes big acquisitions.

Warner Bros is one of the oldest and most important studios in the movie business. It owns a massive library of well-known films and TV shows, including Harry Potter, DC, Friends, Casablanca, HBO, and CNN. But the industry is changing fast. Movie ticket sales are inconsistent, cable TV is shrinking, and every studio is fighting for subscribers in streaming.

For Paramount, buying Warner Bros could help it grow much faster. Paramount+ has only a small slice of the streaming market today. Adding HBO Max and Warner Bros’ huge library could instantly make it a stronger competitor against companies like Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney.

Comcast is also interested, but it only wants Warner Bros’ movie, TV, and streaming businesses… not the cable networks. If Comcast succeeds, it would combine Warner Bros with NBC, creating a very large entertainment company. Still, there may be political and regulatory issues to deal with.

Netflix is the biggest surprise in the race. It has almost never bought a large company before and has mostly grown by building its own content. But owning the Warner Bros studio lot and its film library would give Netflix more control over hit franchises and help it compete for long-term subscribers. People close to the process say Netflix may be just investigating the assets rather than planning a serious bid.

One major factor could be politics. President Donald Trump has a positive relationship with Larry Ellison, and Paramount recently hired Trump’s former antitrust chief as its top legal officer. Some analysts think this gives Paramount a slight advantage.

Warner Bros Discovery has asked all bidders to submit their offers by Thursday. Experts expect several more rounds of bids before a winner is chosen. While the company hopes to finalize a deal by the end of the year, most people say that timeline will be hard to meet due to the size of the deal and the regulatory reviews that would follow.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Disney as mentioned in the article.