As 2025 winds down, the new biggest potential acquisitions of the year appear to be the $55 billion deal for EA by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and other investors and the more recent proposed $82 billion agreement for Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Studios. Now, a new report suggests that Netflix once considered buying EA and two other movie studios before the Warner Bros. negotiations came together.
According to Bloomberg, Netflix executives previously debated whether the streamer should place bids for EA, Fox, and Disney. However, the management team reportedly couldn’t agree on a deal and feared that its interest in those companies would hurt its standing with investors.
The report doesn’t include the details about when Netflix considered these acquisitions, especially since Disney is usually the company that buys other studios including Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm. Disney purchased Fox’s entertainment assets in 2019 following an extended approval process from government agencies around the world.
Neither the Warner Bros. nor the EA deals are guaranteed to go forward, since both of them have to win regulatory approval after facing heavy scrutiny. Both, however, have major implications for the video game industry. If the EA deal is completed, Saudi Arabia’s PIF will reportedly gain majority control of the company. Senators Richard Blumenthal and Elizabeth Warren have raised their concerns about “foreign influence” on EA. In a regulatory filling last month, EA claimed it would retain creative control of the company.
As for Netflix and Warner Bros., the deal would leave the former in charge of the Mortal Kombat, Batman, and Harry Potter video game franchises. The streamer demonstrated greater ambition for the gaming industry until 2024, when it shut down a AAA multiplayer shooter from a team that included Halo and Destiny veteran Joe Staten. In October, Boss Fight–the studio behind Netflix’s Squid Game: Unleashed mobile game–was closed by the streamer.