Winter is Coming
Fansided

Star Trek-Game of Thrones crossovers possible as Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount talk merger

By Dan Selcke

Christina Chong as La’an in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streaming on Paramount+, 2023. Photo Credit: Best Possible Screengrab/Paramount+
Christina Chong as La’an in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds streaming on Paramount+, 2023. Photo Credit: Best Possible Screengrab/Paramount+ /
facebooktwitterreddit

Today we get one step closer to the glorious time when there's only one media company in existence, and its name is DisWarnerParaAppleFlixZon. According to CNBC, Warner Bros. Discovery -- the operator of the Max streaming service and the studio that controls franchises like Dune and Game of Thrones -- is in talks to buy Paramount Global, the operator of the Paramount+ streaming service and the studio that controls franchises like Star Trek and SpongeBob SquarePants. The crossover episodes wright themselves.

There's no guarantee that this merger is actually going to happen, although Paramount controlling partner Shari Redstone wants the deal bad. On the WBD side, CEO David Zaslav has been making some huge moves since taking over the company, itself the result of a merger between Warner Bros. and Discovery, last year.

Upon news of the talks, WBD's stock fell a bit while Paramount's rose slightly, possibly because Paramount is saddled with a lot of debt and Zaslav has been working for a while to get WBD's books under control, often by very controversial measures like shelving finished movies for the tax write-off rather than releasing them to the public. Buying Paramount would give Zaslav a whole new cache of IP to mess with.

Mergers between large media companies are nothing new; just see the number of companies Disney has hoovered up over the years, from Pixar to Lucasfilm to 20th Century Fox. I joked about DisWarnerParaAppleFlixZon up top, but sometimes it really does feel like the corporate world is consolidating the point where costumers will eventually only have a precious few options to choose from, and less protection from price fixing and other kinds of corporate suckiness.

But that's projecting into the future. We'll see what happens when it happens, if anything happens at all.

Next. whatever. Exclusive: Natasha O'Keeffe talks embodying Lanfear in The Wheel of Time season 2. dark

To stay up to date on everything fantasy, science fiction, and WiC, follow our all-encompassing Facebook page and sign up for our exclusive newsletter.

Get HBO, Starz, Showtime and MORE for FREE with a no-risk, 7-day free trial of Amazon Channels