WarnerMedia and Discovery to Merge as Warner Bros. Discovery

BY SCOTTIE KNOLLIN

Discovery announced today that the proposed standalone global entertainment company made from a merger between it and WarnerMedia will be called Warner Bros. Discovery.

In a press release, the company said, “The Warner Bros. Discovery name will honor, celebrate, and elevate the world’s most-storied creative studio in the world with the high quality, global nonfiction storytelling heritage of Discovery.” The new name was unveiled during a ceremony in front of WarnerMedia employees on the Warner Bros. studio lot in Burbank.

Underneath the new name on the official wordmark of the new name, the line, “the stuff that dreams are made of”, from “The Maltese Falcon”, is included. The film is a classic from the Warner Bros. archives.

The merger of the two entertainment companies comes after Discovery reached an agreement with AT&T, the parent company of WarnerMedia, is May. The deal includes the merger of WarnerMedia’s premium entertainment, sports, and news assets with Discovery’s nonfiction and international entertainment and sports businesses. The deal was priced at $43 billion for AT&T, the company that purchased Time Warner three years ago.

There’s no word yet how the new company will be structured. CEO of Discovery, David Zaslav, was onsite for the name announcement in Burbank. It is expected that the merger will lead to a streaming service to host the new company’s library similar to Discovery+ and HBO Max. The deal is set to close in mid-2022.

Merging and acquiring media companies is a hot commodity right now. Shortly after Discovery’s announcement in May, Amazon announced it was planning to purchase MGM.