3 things we will never know after Netflix pulled out of the Warner Bros. bidding, handing it to Paramount

When the credits finally rolled on the Warner Bros. Discovery bidding war this week, it wasn’t the world’s largest streamer standing on the lot. It was Paramount Skydance, another legacy Hollywood studio with a subscale streaming business struggling under a massive debt load.

Netflix formally withdrew its bid on Thursday after Warner’s board deemed Paramount’s latest offer “superior,” ending months of brinksmanship that played out as a throwback, even a sequel of sorts, to the great takeover battles of the 1980s and ’90s...