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How far did Netflix's ambitions really go?
Netflix’s move to buy Warner Bros. was never an isolated impulse — recent reporting shows the streamer quietly considered far bolder plays. Before the public Warner bid, executives explored the possibility of acquiring household giants such as Disney, Electronic Arts (EA) and Fox. Those conversations, leaked through industry reporting, cast Netflix not just as a platform but as a potential owner of huge film, TV and gaming IP.
The Warner announcement — an $82.7 billion offer aimed at a 2026 takeover — made headlines because of the studios it would bring under Netflix’s umbrella (NetherRealm, Rocksteady, TT Games and Avalanche among them). But Bloomberg and InsiderGaming detail earlier, broader internal debates: management scrolled through lists of “all big sellable assets,” and names like EA and Disney appeared on that shortlist.
Why some deals never happened
Despite curiosity, Netflix’s leadership balked at paying premiums that might hurt shareholder value. Co-founder Reed Hastings historically favored building content and tech “from scratch” rather than buying it, and co-CEO Greg Peters publicly warned that giant media mergers often fail to deliver. Those voices helped keep Netflix from crossing the line into blockbuster buyouts — at least for now.
Context: consolidation, streaming wars and gaming
This isn’t just corporate drama. The trend toward consolidation—Disney’s acquisition of Fox, AT&T’s WarnerMedia deal—reshapes how franchises are developed and distributed. If Netflix had acquired Disney or EA, the implications for film franchises, exclusive streaming windows, and even the games-to-series pipeline would be enormous. Think of how the Marvel catalog changed Disney+; now imagine Netflix holding comparable IP.
Comparatively, Netflix’s strategy has often resembled Amazon’s method with Prime Video and MGM: a hybrid of targeted acquisitions and heavy in-house production. Where Amazon used MGM to bulk up legacy IP for theatrical and streaming tie-ins, Netflix could have used EA’s gaming catalog as a source for cross-medium adaptations — a path already trod successfully by studios that turned games into series or films.
Trivia: Reed Hastings once quipped that Netflix would rather invent than acquire. That mantra explains why conversations about mega-deals remained exploratory.
Critical note: Big acquisitions can backfire — they bring debt, creative clashes and cultural mismatches; Netflix’s caution reflects lessons from past media marriages. Still, the mere fact these names were on the table signals how streaming builders now think like studios.
In short, Netflix’s appetite for industry-shaping deals is real — but so are the prudence and politics that have kept the company mainly in the content-creation lane rather than outright media empire-buying.
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