• by Wayne Friedman , 7 hours ago

Paramount Skydance is pushing ahead in its attempt to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, intending to increase its bid to $32 per share to purchase the entire company, according to reports.

Paramount's current formal offer for the company is $30 a share. Earlier reports noted that the company was willing to raise this offer to $31 a share.

This comes as WBD will conclude its seven-day extension of deal-making talks on February 23 at 11:59 p.m.

As a competing bidder for WBD, Netflix gave the company its approval to go ahead with that extension on possible merger talks.

Netflix's deal is valued at $27.75 a share to buy a major piece of the company -- its streaming and studios business.

WBD has set a shareholder vote on the Netflix transaction for March 20 -- a deal the WBD board of directors continues to recommend.

If WBD dramatically moves to shift to the Paramount deal, it would need to pay Netflix a $2.8 billion termination fee, which Paramount has agreed to pay for.

Paramount executives had no comment by press time in response to inquiries from Television News Daily.

On Friday, Paramount said it cleared U.S. antitrust concerns by federal agencies.

Over the weekend, President Trump in a social media post said that Netflix must fire its board member Susan Rice or the company would “pay the consequences.” Rice has made critical remarks about recent business interactions with Trump.

Mid-Monday trading shows WBD's stock up flat at $28.76; Paramount, 3% lower to $10.43; and Netflix's stock down 4% to $75.30.