Ben Fritz explains why Warner Bros. is being sold for $81B, again
The latest WSJ What Went Wrong traces Hollywood's old gold standard to its third sale in a decade, and its comment section turned into a debate over where the trouble started.
The Wall Street Journal
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 356,515 views a day, 14 times a normal first day on this channel (24,710).
Why Warner Bros. Is Being Sold for $81B | WSJ What Went Wrong
Warner Bros. drew the crowd. The newest episode of What Went Wrong, the Wall Street Journal's series on companies that lost their way, passed 440,000 views in a little over a day. A new video on the channel usually ends its first day near 25,000.
The subject carries much of the pull. Warner Bros. is being sold for the third time in a decade, and WSJ's Ben Fritz walks through how it got here. The chapters move from the studio's rise to its fall, then to the Paramount deal and Skydance, the company led by David Ellison. The earlier owners give the story its shape. AT&T bought Time Warner in 2018, then spun WarnerMedia off and merged it with Discovery in 2022.
The comments came in more than twice as fast as on a usual first day, and they read like a film class arguing with a business school. The most liked line sums up the studio's long road from Casablanca to A Minecraft Movie. Many viewers point to the AT&T years as the moment things went wrong. Others say the video skips an earlier agreement with Netflix, and a popular thread asks for the same treatment of Disney's purchase of Fox. A few simply wonder how the home of Friends and Harry Potter ended up here.
The channel also posted a second video about the sale on the same day, under a different title, and that one has stayed at a few thousand views. Samantha Pearson's explainer on Brazil's bitter presidential runoff, posted the day before, also ran well ahead of a usual start.
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What viewers say
"From Casablanca to A Minecraft Movie"
@TroubledTrooperSee it on YouTubeEnd of an era for sure. And incredibly shocking how the studio that owns FRIENDS and HARRY POTTER couldn’t stay afloat!
@Psm_08See it on YouTubeThis is like a train crash in slow motion. One decade to figure out what streaming was. Another decade to try to compete.
@doomtomb3See it on YouTube
Public comments from the video's page on YouTube
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- Channel
- The Wall Street Journal
- Subscribers
- 6,710,000 ▲ 10,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 9,595,917
- Channel views, pace per day
- 1,000,108 (on a normal day: 1,146,798)
- Video published
- October 6, 2026
- Video views so far
- 443,507 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 417,941
The numbers
The figures below show how far this episode ran past the channel's usual first day, with the Brazil runoff explainer close behind.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which 1927 Warner Bros. film is remembered as the first feature-length movie with synchronized spoken dialogue?
Warner Bros. released The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson, in 1927, and its synchronized dialogue scenes helped bring in the era of talking pictures.
