So, Paramount Skydance (PSKY) just won the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) with a cool $111 billion offer. The ink is barely dry, and already a prominent voice in Hollywood is calling it a catastrophe. On the latest episode of "The Big Picture" podcast, host Sean Fennessey didn't mince words: "There was no good outcome in this sale. The history of Hollywood studio mergers and acquisitions is littered with creative roadkill."

This all happened after Netflix (NFLX) co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced they wouldn't match Paramount's revised $31-per-share bid, which the WBD board had declared "superior." Netflix essentially said the deal was "always a 'nice to have' at the right price, not a 'must have' at any price." So, Paramount gets the keys to the kingdom—the studio behind "Succession," "Oppenheimer," and CNN—and Netflix walks away. But who really won here?

The Case of the Unnecessary Sale

Fennessey's core argument is pretty simple: Warner Bros. didn't need to be sold. At all. "It's a great business with enough viable properties to sustain another century of film, TV, and any other forms of media," he said. The problem, in his view, is the motivation behind the deal. "But the people who bought the company in 2022 bought it to sell it." That's a pretty damning way to frame a $111 billion transaction—not as a strategic vision for the future, but as a corporate flip of a crown jewel.

He's referring to the 2022 merger that created Warner Bros. Discovery, when AT&T spun off WarnerMedia and combined it with Discovery under CEO David Zaslav. To illustrate his point about the perils of these mega-mergers, Fennessey pointed to the Disney-Fox deal from 2019. "Look at the Fox Disney deal from 7 years ago and ask yourself if that helps movies in any way. This one could be significantly worse." The worry, as he sees it, is that these deals "tend to favor corporate synergies over creative risk taking" and ultimately "shrink the number of people who get to work in the movie business."

One Watchful Eye Over HBO, CNN, and CBS

Where Fennessey's alarm bells ring loudest is around the political dimension of this deal. David Ellison, the head of Skydance, will now oversee not just entertainment powerhouses like the studios behind "Game of Thrones" and "Barbie," but also major news networks CNN and CBS. The podcast described CBS as already being under scrutiny for a "pivot rightward and in the direction of President Trump." "He'll now have CNN and HBO under that same watchful eye," Fennessey warned.

This isn't just podcast speculation. The political optics are tangible. Ellison attended Trump's State of the Union this week as a guest of Senator Lindsey Graham. Meanwhile, reports indicated Netflix's Ted Sarandos was at the White House on the very day Netflix dropped out of the bidding. The convergence of media power and political alignment is suddenly a very real part of this story.

Is Skydance the Right Steward?

So, is Skydance, the company behind the takeover, equipped to steward a legacy that stretches from "Casablanca" to "Harry Potter"? Fennessey was candid about their track record. "Skydance's track record as a tastemaker is iffy at best." The company has produced genuine hits like "Top Gun: Maverick" and "True Grit," but also a string of forgettable streaming action films. "Sometimes you're a genius," he said, "sometimes your taste leads you to the bottom of the barrel."

And then there's the price tag. At $111 billion, the financial risk is enormous. Fennessey highlighted the danger of over-leverage: "it's not hard to see a world in which Paramount is overleveraged by debt... with any number of unfortunate and ugly outcomes." Paying top dollar for an asset can lead to desperate cost-cutting and creative stagnation, a familiar story in corporate mergers.

Netflix: The Real Winner?

Here's the twist: Fennessey argues that the smartest player in this whole saga might be the one that walked away. "Netflix may have just played the most successful game of chicken in the history of modern media. It lost the battle for Warner Brothers, but almost certainly won the long term fight for primacy."

The market seems to agree. Netflix shares surged more than 13% in after-hours trading on Thursday after the announcement and were up over 7% at $90.64 before the bell on Friday. Investors appear relieved that Netflix didn't get sucked into a bidding war and take on a massive, debt-fueled acquisition. Sometimes the best deal is the one you don't make.

The story isn't over yet. The deal still faces regulatory review, with a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing scheduled for March 4. But for now, Hollywood has a new mega-studio, a critic sounding a major alarm, and a streaming giant that might have just made the savviest move of all by staying on the sidelines.