Thursday delivered the kind of trading day that gets Wall Street talking. Warner Bros. Discovery (Nasdaq: WBD) shares soared by over 28.95%, marking the stock’s single largest daily gain on record. At the closing bell, the price landed at $16.17, up from $12.54 the day before. More than 297 million shares changed hands, a trading volume that ranks among the company’s busiest sessions ever. In early morning trading today, the stock was up a further 11% to over $18.00.
The boost came after reports surfaced that the newly merged Paramount Skydance (NASDAQ: PSKY) plans to make an acquisition offer for all of Warner Bros. Discovery. Paramount Skydance itself saw its stock jump by over 15.55% in the wake of the news. Neither company has issued a detailed public statement, but sources familiar with the situation told several media outlets that Paramount Skydance has retained an investment bank and is working out the specific terms for a formal bid.
Initial details about this potential takeover first appeared in The Wall Street Journal on Thursday morning. According to that report, the bid in the works would be largely cash, backed by the Ellison family, with David Ellison at the helm of the newly structured Paramount Skydance. The offer is expected to cover Warner Bros. Discovery’s entire suite of businesses, including the iconic Warner Bros. film studio, TV and streaming operations, such as HBO Max, and global cable channels like CNN, TBS, and TNT.
This moment comes just weeks after Paramount completed its own headline-making merger with Skydance Media, which was finalized in August. The deal brought assets like CBS, Showtime, Nickelodeon, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, and The CW under David Ellison’s leadership. Now, the possibility of combining networks such as HBO and CNN with CBS and Showtime raises fresh questions about how Hollywood’s major players might look in a few years and how the streaming wars could intensify.
Warner Bros. Discovery’s leadership, for its part, spent much of the summer reorganizing. In June, the company unveiled plans to spin off its global TV networks into a separate entity while focusing its main business on studio and streaming operations. The reported bid leaves it unclear whether this restructuring will proceed as planned if Paramount Skydance’s acquisition materializes. According to several reports, insiders at both companies have confirmed ongoing discussions but caution that a formal offer has not yet been submitted. Like many high-stakes deals, it remains possible that nothing goes forward and that the conversation simply fades out.
Market participants clearly read the news as a game-changer. WBD shares staged an intraday rally of nearly 37% at one point before settling back, while Paramount Skydance’s gains reflected renewed investor optimism about the leverage a combined studio and media giant could wield in negotiations and content battles with big tech streamers such as Netflix, Amazon, and Apple.
The potential deal, if it goes through, would arguably rank as the largest merger between two traditional Hollywood studios in recent history. It is also likely to set off a new wave of deal-making as legacy media companies face pressure to bulk up and compete with global streaming platforms. Analysts say the headlines alone could encourage further bids, sparking the next chapter in the ongoing saga of industry consolidation. For now, the only certain winners are those who held WBD stock before today’s open.
