”Neither Side Is Used to Losing.” Lucas Shaw on What’s Next for Netflix and Paramount in the Battle for Warner Bros.

The backstory here is that weeks ago, Bloomberg’s Lucas Shaw agreed to join me for my 2025/2026 look back/look ahead episode. And then things got way more compelling, because Paramount and Netflix got into a truly unprecedented fight over the future of Warner Bros Discovery.

So that’s what we’re talking about here, including:

*Why this truly is a turning point for Hollywood, and streaming, and the great media/tech collision we’ve been covering for years.

*How Trump, Middle Eastern money and antitrust regulators complicate the deal

*Who actually needs this merger more.

*What happens now that WBD has formally dismissed Paramount’s bid? Again: we recorded this a few days before the news — but as you’ll hear, we had a pretty good sense of how it was going to go.

And because this still is a wrap-up episode, we got some AI vs. Hollywood chat into this one, as well as some listening/watching recs.

PS: I’ve got some bonus programming coming to you over the next couple of weeks. Have a great holiday, and I’ll see you in January.

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