Despite reports that Apple TV was in talks to buy Warner Bros whole library, the venerable film studio has been bought by Netflix.

From its start in 2019, a criticism of Apple TV has been that its catalog of films and TV shows is minuscule compared to rivals such as Disney+ and Netflix. It was constantly rumored to be looking to buy a library of films, and in October 2025, Warner Bros executives were said to be talking with it and others.

At that point, Warner Bros had reportedly rejected bids from Paramount Skydance, leaving Apple TV, Netflix, Comcast, and Amazon in the running. According to trade paper Deadline, though, Netflix has now sealed the deal.

Specifically, Netflix will own Warner Bros plus its film and television production studios, and also channels such as HBO and HBO Max. The deal has yet to get regulatory approval, but if it does, Netflix will be paying $82.7 billion in total.

As well as awaiting approval, the deal will also wait to be finalized until after a separate corporate move is completed. Warner Bros Discovery's international division, Discovery Global, is being split out into a separate, publicly traded company.

That is not now expected to happen until the third quarter of 2026. So it will be some time yet before the studio's famous badge icon — in use since 1925 — may be subtitled "A Netflix Company".

Apple TV has acquired individual films before — in 2022 it became the first streamer to win a Best Picture Oscar because it bought "CODA," for instance. And from time to time it will temporarily supplement its catalogue with films related to ones it has made.

But despite reportedly being in talks in 2017 to buy Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment, and in 2021 also A24 — maker of Apple's "On the Rocks" movie — the company has yet to acquire any firm's catalogue.

Of all of the very many rumors of different libraries Apple has considered, a Warner Bros acquisition arguably made the most sense. Also in October 2025, market research firm Antenna claimed that 21% of HBO subscribers in the US also paid for Apple TV, so there was an existing overlap.

Plus if Apple had bought Warner Bros to gain HBO, subscribers who get that channel via Netflix, Paramount+, or Peacock, would have had to switch to Apple TV to continue.