Last Sunday I rewatched a Harry Potter film because I had a World Literature paragraph to finish and a bad habit of rewarding myself first. Halfway through, a thought arrive that I could not send back: someone own this. Not the story in my head. The actual film, the music, the castle, the right to put it on a home screen and charge for the button.
In December, Netflix agreed to buy Warner Bros Discovery’s film studio and streaming unit — HBO, the Warner library, all of that — for about $72 to $83 billion. I write the numbers down because they look made up. Then, late this February, Warner’s board say a higher bid from Paramount Skydance was “superior.” Paramount offered about $31 a share in cash, which valued the whole company near $111 billion. Netflix look at that price and walk away. They say the deal was “no longer financially attractive.”
I laugh, then feel odd for laughing. Harry Potter, Batman, a pile of HBO shows people quote in the corridor — and the sentence that stop the sale was about attractiveness, like a tag on a coat.
In Business this is a merger, or a takeover, depending how proud the buyer want to sound. One company try to buy another so it can grow fast instead of building everything itself. Netflix already have subscribers. What it wanted was the library: years of stories it would not have to invent from zero. Market share in streaming is not only about who have the nicer app. It is about who own the thing you refuse to cancel, the thing that make a household keep paying even when they complain.
The part I cannot drop is how fast the number move. In December the same studio was worth one amount. In February it was worth a much bigger one, because someone else want it more, or say they did. That is not magic, and it is not a better castle. That is two buyers in a room. I have been doing this with paintings in my head for a long time. A picture I like can sit in a classroom and get ignored. A picture with the right name sell for more than a house. The object did not change. The fight around it did.
Netflix decide $111 billion was too much for that fight. I understand that and I also don’t. How do you put a number on a story that already live in people’s mouths? You do it anyway. You count subscribers, you count years of film, you count how scared you are of the other company owning the ending. Then you say no, and the news call it discipline.
I keep a private list of things I think are “worth it.” A book that cost less than lunch. A song I have played too many times. A film I can enter in the middle. None of those numbers would survive a board meeting. That might be the point. If I get to study finance, part of it will be not paying any price just because you love the thing. The other part is noticing when love is the reason the price went up.
Paramount was willing. Netflix was not. The stories are the same this week as last week. Only the bid change, and that is a very strange way to measure a castle.