A cloud looms over Warner Bros. because of the lawsuit by the Department of Justice against AT&T’s $85 billion bid to buy studio parent company, Time Warner.
If the merger fails, an individual close to the company told TheWrap that Time Warner would likely be broken up into parts and sold separately as Warner Bros., HBO, and Turner — leaving the fate of DC Comics a bit up in the air.
DC Entertainment was not named as a potential spin-off of its own, but it currently operates under the umbrella of Warner Bros – and has since the early 1970s.
In October 2016, it was announced that AT&T would purchase Time Warner for $85 billion ($108 billion including debt). AT&T owns DirecTV, having purchased the satellite TV provider in a $48 billion transaction approved in July 2015. This deal made AT&T the largest distributor of traditional subscription television, with over 25 million TV subscribers in the United States, between DirecTV and the AT&T U-Verse service.