‘It’s not a political deal’

Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos brushed off President Trump’s demand to fire ex-Biden official Susan Rice from the streamer’s board — an exhortation that came as Netflix has been seeking to buy key parts of Warner Bros. Discovery.

Asked Monday about Trump’s recent demand on Truth Social for Rice’s ouster, Sarandos said of the president, “He likes to do a lot of things on social media.”

“This is a business deal. It’s not a political deal. This deal is run by the Department of Justice in the US and regulators throughout Europe and around the world,” the exec told the BBC.

The world’s largest streaming service has been looking to take over Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming business, as a review period of Paramount’s rival bid was slated to expire just before midnight Tuesday.

In a Truth Social post late Saturday, Trump implied there could be trouble ahead for the Netflix-WBD tie-up if Rice – who served in top policy positions under the Biden and Obama administrations – remains on Netflix’s board.

“Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences. She’s got no talent or skills – Purely a political hack!” the president wrote.

His social media post came in response to a tweet from MAGA influencer Laura Loomer, who urged the Trump administration to kill the Netflix-WBD deal.

Rice recently warned that corporations that “take a knee” to the Trump administration should expect to be “held accountable” if Democrats return to power.

“If these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules, and, you know, say, ‘Oh, never mind. We’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted.’ I think they’ve got another thing coming,” she told Preet Bharara, former US attorney for the Southern District of New York, during a podcast appearance last week.

In December, Netflix agreed to pay $27.75 a share in cash in a deal worth $72 billion to acquire WBD’s studios and its streaming service, HBO Max — potentially creating a Hollywood mammoth that owns everything from “Stranger Things” to the “Harry Potter” franchise.

Warner Bros. announced last week that it would restart talks with hostile bidder Paramount Skydance following the media giant’s revised offer, which included an agreement to pay the $2.8 billion termination fee to Netflix and a “ticking fee” to shareholders worth $650 million.

The company also said that a Paramount representative had implied the company was willing to up its offer to $31 a share if Warner engaged in meaningful deal talks – after previously accusing the company of not giving PSKY a fair change against Netflix.

Netflix said it had granted WBD a seven-day window, which ends late Monday, to engage with Paramount Skydance.

Warner Bros. has repeatedly said it still favors the Netflix deal.

“Our deal is growth,” Sarandos said Monday, speaking in London the morning after the BAFTA Film Awards.

He said Netflix has spent $6 billion on original UK programming since 2020 and created 50,000 jobs throughout the country.

Paramount’s offer is the kind of “classic horizontal media mergers that are always bad for consumers, always bad for creators,” Sarandos argued – adding that it could slash Hollywood’s five major studios down to four.

Asked about how he defended the Netflix deal to Trump, Sarandos said: “This is a vertical merger. We’re buying assets that we don’t currently have – a movie studio and a distribution entity.”

Sarandos also pushed back on the role of Gulf sovereign wealth funds and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner in the Paramount deal.

When asked whether it was wrong for foreign governments to hold stakes in news networks, Sarandos said: “I think it’s a bad idea, typically.

The WBD sale to Paramount Skydance would include its cable assets, among them CNN. Paramount already owns CBS News.

Some of the Gulf states involved in the proposal “are not very big on the First Amendment,” Sarandos said in a jab at the deal.

He added that it “seems very odd to me, with the level of investment that we’re talking about,” that Paramount would suggest that those foreign governments would have no influence over CNN and CBS’ coverage.

Sarandos was also asked to respond to backlash from the film industry. 

James Cameron – who directed and produced the 1997 Paramount film “Titanic” – has argued that a Netflix merger would be “disastrous” for the cinema industry.

Sarandos shrugged off the criticism as “disingenuous,” adding that he met with Cameron on Dec. 20 and told him about the company’s commitment to release all WBD films in theaters only for 45 days.

“We spent five minutes of our conversation on that, and we talked mostly about these glasses that he’s developing for Meta to watch movies at home,” the exec said.

He added that the average Netflix user watches seven movies a month, while the average American only goes to the movies twice a year – arguing that Netflix encourages a “better, deeper, richer relationship” with film.