Warner Bros. Discovery Shares Surge After CEO Reportedly Shops Company Amid Potential Paramount Skydance Bid

Warner Bros. Discovery shares jumped 17% to $18.87 on Friday after the New York Post reported that Chief Executive Officer David Zaslav has begun shopping the company to prospective buyers, a move that could prompt a bidding contest with a reported interest from Paramount Skydance.

The Post reported that Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison is preparing an all-cash offer of $50 billion or more for the company that owns Warner Bros. studio, HBO, TNT and CNN. According to the report, Zaslav has met with bankers at Goldman Sachs to court potential suitors including Amazon, Apple and Netflix and to press for a higher valuation.

The New York Post reported that Zaslav’s apparent objective is to boost the stock toward $40 a share. The article said that if Zaslav does not receive acceptable offers, he may use a higher share price to increase WBD’s content acquisitions. WBD and Skydance did not respond to requests for comment, the Post said.

Investors reacted sharply to the report, sending WBD’s stock price up by nearly a fifth on the day. The move underscores growing market attention to large media assets as strategic targets for both traditional media operators and deep-pocketed technology platforms.

The Post also reported that interest in WBD’s properties, including ratings-challenged CNN, has expanded amid a more permissive regulatory environment in recent years. The article said media owner Jay Penske has expressed interest in CNN. Those details, like the potential Skydance bid and Zaslav’s outreach, were reported by the Post and have not been confirmed by the companies involved.

Analysts and market participants will watch for formal bids or statements that could clarify whether a sale process has begun and which buyers might pursue a deal. A competing offer in the range cited by the Post would represent one of the larger proposed transactions for a U.S. media conglomerate in recent years and could reshape holdings among broadcast and streaming competitors.

Until there is official confirmation, the reported discussions and the market’s response highlight the continuing consolidation pressure in the media sector, as companies evaluate scale, content libraries and distribution in an increasingly competitive streaming landscape.

Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery have traded with volatility since the company’s combination and subsequent strategic shifts, and any formal sale effort would prompt regulatory and shareholder scrutiny. For now, public markets and industry watchers are parsing unconfirmed reports and await comment or filings that would indicate whether a sale process is under way.