What does the sale of Warner Bros to Netflix or Paramount mean for India?

A potential Netflix-Warner Bros merger could shake up India's streaming lineup, threatening Hollywood favourites on rivals like JioHotstar and Amazon Prime Video

The White Lotus, Sopranos, Mare of Easttown and Game of Thrones are among dozens of HBO Max shows that might leave JioHotstar over the next 12-18 months. And The Big Bang Theory, The Vampire Diaries and Two and a Half Men among others could exit Amazon Prime Video. 

That is if the $83 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery, which owns these titles, by Netflix goes through. On December 5, Ted Sarandos, co-CEO, president and director of Netflix announced that it is buying “Warner Bros Discovery’s film and TV studios, HBO Max and HBO.” The deal does not include most of Warner’s linear television networks like Discovery Global or TNT. 

On December 8, Paramount, which had been thwarted in its attempts to buy Warner earlier in the year, launched a hostile bid at $108 billion. 

If Netflix and Warner combine, it will create a player with an estimated $70 billion in revenue. If it’s Paramount and Warner, that figure is $79 billion, making it the largest in the entertainment space globally. It would be ahead of YouTube ($61 billion) and The Walt Disney Company, which, excluding parks and experiences, is at $58 billion, said a Media Partners Asia (MPA) research note. 

“This deal is largely about the United States and Hollywood/English language franchises. I don’t think it’s going to significantly change Netflix’s life in India. Its Indian journey is about how to penetrate more households with local entertainment and content and, potentially, also with sports,” said Vivek Couto, CEO and executive director, MPA. Parry Ravindranathan, CEO and cofounder of Converj and former president and managing director, Bloomberg Media, international, agrees; “Whether the Warner Brothers deal happens with Netflix or Paramount, it makes no material difference to the Indian media landscape.” 

The small-screen impact 

Consider this. HBO Max has no service in the ₹2.5 trillion Indian media and entertainment market; it only licenses its shows to JioHotstar. The brand remains niche with traction in the top 5-6 million of India’s 125 million streaming homes. That sliver is also the market that pays heavily for subscriptions — the one  that JioStar might need to worry about if the licensing deal does fall through, which it probably will. 

“Netflix hates licensing as a business. Over the long run, this will mean they will pull all the licensing deals in Asia that WBD has,” said Ravindranathan. 

“Until the deal closes, it remains business as usual for everyone. It is too early to comment,” said a senior executive at JioStar. 

On the other hand Paramount has already given up on the India market. Its Indian subsidiary Viacom18 (MTV, VH1, Colors etc) is owned by Reliance Industries and Bodhi Tree Systems. JioStar, the result of a merger between Viacom18 Media and The Walt Disney Company’s Star India, is majority owned by Reliance. In short, Paramount across its streaming and studio businesses is aligned with Jio. 

The more interesting question, said one insider, is what it does for Netflix. “It will increase the hours of programming on Netflix India and that could help with engagement (time spent) but you can’t take the price up with it. It is not a replacement for local content. The subscription growth money is only in local content,” said this person, echoing Couto. 

The bottom-line: “In two years time this (Netflix-Warner) will impact JioStar and also Amazon to some extent. But in two years time, the Indian marketplace is going to look very different. Right now, you have global streamers (Netflix and Amazon Prime Video) neck-and- neck at half-a-billion dollars in revenue each. Jio is double that size at a billion dollars on only streaming revenue,” said Couto. 

The big-screen fallout 

About a decade back, films would come onto the small screen a few months after their theatrical release. This is now down to 6-8 weeks or even less, depending on the language, market and film. Many of the biggest hits — No Time to Die or Mission Impossible-The Final Reckoning for instance — were on pay-per-view on Prime video or other services with four and 12 weeks of release respectively. This shortening of the theatrical window has meant immense pressure on a format that brings in three-fourth or more of the total money the film business makes. The press and trade, in the US and in India, have raised red flags on this problem. 

Kamal Gianchandani, CEO of PVR Pictures and president of the Multiplex Association of India said in a press release on December 5 that “Netflix has consistently made it clear through its limited and highly restrictive approach to theatrical releases that it does not believe in the cinema-first model. If this acquisition proceeds, the risk is two-fold: a meaningful reduction in high-quality content for cinemas, and the potential for shortened or non-existent theatrical windows.” 

Sarandos, questioned on this issue in the merger call last week, said, “We've released about 30 films in theatres this year. It sounds like we have this opposition to movies in the theatres. My pushback has been mostly in the fact that long exclusive windows are not consumer- friendly. Over time windows will evolve to be much more consumer- friendly. Warner Bros will continue to go to the theatres through Warner Bros, and Netflix movies will take the same strides they have. But our primary goal is to bring first-run movies to our members.” 

Netflix is probably hedging its bets while it tackles opposition and a possible regulatory disapproval of this merger that has both Washington and Hollywood abuzz. Analysts reckon this might hit the business for Hollywood films in India, particularly from Warner which has given us Harry Potter, Barbie and The Lord of the Rings among others. Note that all of Hollywood put together brings just about 8-10 per cent of the Indian box-office. It may not seem much but this 8-10 per cent is at the high-end of the market, so margins at some multiplex chains could get impacted. 

Devil and the deep blue sea 

“The Netflix acquisition of WBD would be bad for the movie industry. But a Paramount one would be devastating for journalism as their CBS acquisition has shown. Either way, it concentrates power,” said Ravindranathan. In July 2025, Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit filed by President Donald Trump alleging deceptive editing of an interview with Kamala Harris on 60 Minutes on CBS News. When The Late Show host Stephen Colbert called it “a big fat bribe” to Trump on CBS, Paramount announced the cancellation of his show. 

But that is in the US — for now the Indian impact of any of these two mergers remains minimal. 

 

X: @vanitakohlik