If Ted Sarandos is concerned about any competitive edge that a Paramount/Warner Bros. merger might pose, he’s not showing it. Speaking Wednesday at the Bloomberg Screentime conference, Sarandos was mostly dismissive of any rivalry: “It’s looked on paper so far it’s one and one,” he said, referring to the company’s two streaming services. For some reason, we had a very well-publicized lunch.
We have eaten together many times … He’s going to be in a very good position wherever he does. He’s a super talented guy.” The news of Bloys’ ascension to take over Paramount+ alongside HBO Max has not officially been announced, but with a judge giving the final sign-off Wednesday to let the merger proceed, the deal — and some of the new structure, including Bloys’ role — is expected to be announced next week. Does Sarandos regret Netflix’s bid for Warner Bros.
At our scale, that was the top price point where I thought we could return value to our shareholders with that asset. Any more than that, I thought we’d be taking into negative territory, even with our scale. The deal itself kind of threw the business narrative off for investors, for the press, for other folks.
You have to be willing to put the business narrative at risk for something that’s good for the long term of the business.” Meanwhile, Sarandos addressed his relationship with Donald Trump — and whether he thinks a federal production tax credit can happen. Sarandos defended Trump when it came to this topic: “For everything else you might think, he is a guy who really cares about the entertainment business, and he cares about protecting the industry and creating jobs, and he loves creating jobs in the entertainment business in America,” Sarandos said. Public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to deliver the most they can for the money, so they chase those incentives all over the place.
In the U.S., the states compete with each other for that, but they do not compete well with other countries for it in total. So the federal incentive, which would be a layer of incentive that would go on top of the states’ incentives, would compete with other countries and bring those keep those jobs back in America.” Sarandos noted that Netflix has filmed all over the country and has seen where state incentives work best, and he singled out New Jersey as being the most competitive in the country. On the flip side, he warned that California — and Los Angeles in particular — is still not keeping pace.
They make it very difficult to shoot in the city of Los Angeles. I tell you, we just finished the David Fincher’s movie (‘The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth’) and it was no walk in the park.” Sarandos opened his conversation by answering questions about Netflix’s slower growth (2% year-over-year growth in user engagement during the first half in 2026). Meaning, when we do live programming on Netflix, which is a relatively new thing, we spend about 5% of our content budget on live events.
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