Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. started in 1923 when four brothers, Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack, turned a small distribution outfit into a full-fledged studio. They had already been running Warner Features since 1912, but the official incorporation gave them the platform to change movies forever. In 1927, they released The Jazz Singer, the first feature-length film with synchronized dialogue, and suddenly the silent era was on its way out. That single gamble broke the stranglehold of Paramount, Universal, and First National, lifting Warner Bros. into the top tier of Hollywood.

Over the next hundred years, the brand expanded far beyond the movie lot. Warner Bros. Television became a powerhouse in its own right, producing shows like Friends and The Big Bang Theory. The studio's animation division gave the world Looney Tunes, and its music arm launched Warner Records. The corporate parent changed more than once, Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. in 1990, then AOL in 2001 in a deal that became a cautionary tale. AT&T bought the whole thing for $85 billion in 2018, renamed it WarnerMedia, and launched HBO Max. In April 2022, AT&T spun off WarnerMedia to merge with Discovery, creating Warner Bros. Discovery under CEO David Zaslav.

Today the brand sits at the center of a media conglomerate that includes DC Studios, HBO, CNN, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, TNT Sports, and a vast library of franchises from Harry Potter to The Lord of the Rings. The company has faced tough years, operating losses in 2022 and 2023, but it still commands enormous cultural weight. In 2025, the Minecraft movie opened to a record $300 million globally, and the first trailer for James Gunn's Superman became the most-viewed in DC history. By late 2025, the company was the target of competing takeover bids: Netflix offered $72 billion for the film and TV studios plus HBO, while Paramount/Skydance made a $108.4 billion all-cash offer for the whole enterprise. [edit]