Why did Netflix walk away from buying Warner Bros. Discovery, according to Reed Hastings?

Reed Hastings says Netflix was happy with Warner Bros. Discovery at the price it originally bid, but when the bidding war with Paramount pushed the price up a lot, the deal stopped making economic sense. He stresses Netflix could have paid more and chose not to. Netflix collected a breakup fee of a couple billion dollars, and Hastings sees the merged Paramount's biggest challenge as its debt.

• Kara Swisher put the debt load from the Paramount deal at about $80 billion.
• Hastings says Netflix's next move is simply better content, a bigger share of the year's top 100 shows and films.

▸In their words

“At the price that we had bid, we were really happy.” Reed Hastings · at 22:35 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on On with Kara Swisher (2026-10-26). Read the whole episode summary →

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