Warner Bros. Is Selling Off $500 Million Of Its Most Valuable Assets
Warner Bros. Discovery is selling $500 million worth of movie and music rights for some quick cash.
Variety reports that Warner Bros. is selling off slightly less than half of the studio’s film and TV music-publishing assets to the highest bidder. Sources speculate that this offloading of intellectual property is in line with Warner Bros. Discovery’s efforts to pare down the considerable amount of debt that they have racked up as a result of the constantly changing media landscape that these days has a much stronger emphasis on streaming rather than domestic cable channels.
Though the $500 million asking price is just a drop in the bucket compared to the $49.5 billion in debt they’re facing, it’s safe to say that every dollar will help Warner Bros. to stay on the path toward profitability.
The Warner Bros. catalog that is up for sale is rumored to include music from titles such as Purple Rain, The Last Waltz, Sesame Street, Evita, Rent, Dick Tracy, Sweeney Todd, as well as a number of Batman soundtracks. It has been suggested that Sony is the front-runner in this bidding war, but reps from Warner Discovery and Sony have not responded to these claims at the time of this article.
So if you’re worried about the Mars Volta or Red Hot Chili Peppers catalogs going up for sale (and ending up in car commercials), it’s safe to say that we’re only going to see music from film and TV properties get offloaded during this sale and subsequent acquisition.
This may seem like a drastic move, but intellectual property sales like this happen all the time. Sometimes holding onto old assets is a financial burden, and in other cases, it’s a last-ditch effort to get one last monetary bump out of properties that aren’t generating revenue on the home front anymore.
In other words, instead of hoarding the rights to once profitable assets that are basically just sitting in a vault, Warner Bros. has a unique opportunity to get a quick payday that may help them move forward in their efforts to dominate the streaming sector.
One glaring issue that some skeptics have pointed out is that Warner Bros. is selling off assets that are declining in value and that the catalog consists mostly of film soundtracks/scores, TV themes, and musical cues for the above mentioned titles, as well as some more obscure ones. This means that whoever ends up buying these film scores and bumpers better have a solid game plan to see a return on their investment.
We’d be hard-pressed to think of what companies like Sony could do with the newly obtained rights to the Purple Rain soundtrack without actually having the rights to the movie itself, but if they can find a way to move units, then more power to them!
Let’s hope that Warner Bros. knows what they’re doing and that selling off half of its TV and music publishing assets is the right move to make. It’s been reported that this chunk of intellectual property has a valuation that’s just north of $1 billion, so it already seems that they’re counting their losses in their effort to pay off a sliver of debt that will still be all-consuming after this exchange is made.
We’d be lying if we said that witnessing so many companies like Warner Bros. acquire, sell, and trade assets wasn’t totally dizzying, but that’s show business for you.
