Lifestyle
Saturn Return, a coming-of-age framework that’s resonating everywhere
In November of 2020, I went on my first mushroom trip.
I chose the date arbitrarily, eventually landing on Black Friday because of the poetic ring to it, a wink to the “hero’s dose” I planned on taking — enough to conjure an “ego death,” a temporary pause from the regularly scheduled mind loops and tensions. I waited for a day clear of any commitments, which in the middle of COVID wasn’t hard to find.
The trip lasted about six hours, almost precisely the length of the Johns Hopkins playlist I had found on Spotify to accompany me through the twists and turns. And there were twists and turns. When my consciousness finally floated back to the chimney that was my body, I walked outside to watch the soft, peach sunset as Louis Armstrong crooned from portable speakers, serenading me out of the psilocybin’s final moments. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the middle of more than just one ending — my Saturn Return was also coming to a close.
I was 31, living through an undoubtedly disorienting collective moment, and there was also recalibration occurring on a more personal scale inside. The years prior had been fraught with anger over Trump’s election, which ultimately fueled my detangling from Christianity, the belief system in which I was raised. I felt the distinct ache of being more distant from my parents, whom I still loved, as the gap in our perspectives was widening. I was venturing beyond where I had always belonged, walking the lonely path of differentiation — unmoored and unsure of where it might take me. I sensed a deeper self wanting to emerge, but still felt torn between two worlds; I knew what I was leaving but not yet where I was headed. I feared that changing might mean losing the people I loved, a very real risk I saw playing out around me. With the mushroom trip, it’s like my psyche had been looking for some kind of cosmic comfort, to help me turn the page.
I don’t remember when I first heard the phrase “Saturn Return,” but I do remember being immediately intrigued. My understanding of it was a slow burn, quite the opposite of the hot and heavy conversion experiences I was familiar with, having grown up Christian in Texas. Astrology had never been something on my internal dashboard, an unopened Rand McNally buried in the backseat. I grew up viewing astrology as not only unserious, but also a grave sign of misplaced trust, as prayer and Scripture were the only guidance one should ever need. Looking beyond those guideposts meant flirting with danger — at risk of becoming untethered and lost.
But the more I learned about Saturn Return — the idea that between the ages of 27 to 31 one moved through some distinct portal to adulthood — the more I felt a deep resonance and relief: finally, a coming-of-age framework that didn’t begin in one’s teens or early 20s, exhausted plotlines that made me feel behind, like I had missed something. The Saturn Return framework was a comforting thought: that there was some sort of cosmic force supporting the emerging self, on a timeline that matched my own life’s more closely.
And now Saturn Return seems to be popping off everywhere, or at least among the pop girlies. From Adele’s Saturn tattoo on her right forearm to Ariana Grande’s “Saturn Returns Interlude” (in which astrologer Diana Garland describes it as the time to “wake up!”) to Sza’s “Saturn” — the concept is orbiting the zeitgeist. “My Saturn has returned / When I turned 27 everything started to change,” Kacey Musgraves sings on “Deeper Well,” the title track of her new album, released earlier this year. At the Kia Forum in October, I watched Musgraves play an acoustic set underneath a hovering Saturn installation.
Kacey Musgraves performs an acoustic set underneath a hovering Saturn installation.
(Jasmine Safaeian)
But even for its heightening visibility in pop culture, the term is still somewhat nebulous — evoking a range from curiosity to dread. There’s still this sense that we’re in a game of telephone about its meaning. What is it, and why Saturn? Is it something to brace oneself for or look forward to? And what exactly is supposed to be happening?
Chani Nicholas, one of the most prominent astrologers currently at work and founder of the CHANI app, translates the cosmos into accessible language. The app, which launched in 2020 and now has over 1 million downloads, includes resources like personalized birth chart readings, guided meditations, journal prompts and weekly astrological forecasts, which Chani playfully narrates herself. I’ve been following Chani’s work since reading her 2020 New York Times bestseller “You Were Born for This,” so getting to bring her my Saturn Return questions felt like getting closer to the starting point in the telephone circle.
“Saturn is all about age and … coming up against authority — boundaries and authorship,” Chani, who has lived in Los Angeles off and on since 2005, says over Zoom in her signature clear-rimmed frames. “Saturn’s always trying to get you to take responsibility and accountability for where you are and what you’re doing.”
She explains how Saturn moves in phases — similar to the moon, yet on a different timetable. Every seven years Saturn moves 90 degrees farther along in its orbit from the place it was in the sky when you were born. So by the time you’re nearing 30, Saturn “returns” to where it started in your birth chart, completing its first full rotation around the sun. If we’re lucky, we’ll experience three Saturn Returns in our lifetimes: the first when we’re nearing 30 years old, the second happening around 60, and the last around 90 — each one sparking an initiation into a new life phase.
During her own Saturn Return, Chani packed up her life in Toronto and moved to Los Angeles “with no car, no friends or contacts, and only $1,500” in her pocket. “All I had was a dream and a need to prove to myself that I could do something challenging,” she says. “I needed space and time to find myself, and distance from everything that had defined me.”
Chani refers to Saturn as “a threshold deity” because, for thousands of years in ancient astrology, it was the last planet we could see without a telescope. “It was what we thought was the last planet out there, the boundary of our known understanding of the cosmos,” she says. Because Saturn was so dim, as well as so far and slow, it had “this heft and heaviness,” and became known in traditional astrology as the Greater Malefic, a planet of hard things.
“It’s not easy, breezy, light, kind or friendly,” Chani explains. “Saturn will always be like, ‘Here’s the bill. Here’s the reality check.’ But if you understand and work with your Saturn, then you’re going to be the one who knows how to be responsible, reliable, consistent and boundaried. If you’ve ever met someone who’s powerful in any way, shape, or form — they have exceptional boundaries.”
I ask about this pervasive idea that Saturn Returns are something to buckle up for — are they inherently disruptive? Chani shakes her head, eager to weigh in: “Disruption is not a part of Saturn Return; however, your cohort and the cohort younger than you — so we’re talking millennials and Gen Z — most of you have this thing where you have Saturn and the planet Uranus, the planet of disruption, together.” In Chani’s view, this misleading conflation of Saturn and disruption has become mainstream because millennials and Gen Z drive the conversation on the internet. But this flavor of disruption is unique to us — and not necessarily Saturn’s signature.
To determine the timing, texture and themes of your Saturn Return, you have to know what zodiac sign Saturn was in when you were born, which you can find in the CHANI app (in my case it was Capricorn). You also want to look at the house where Saturn is stationed in your chart, the planets around Saturn in your chart, and what time of day you were born. (Supposedly if you were born during the day, your Saturn Return just might be a little easier.)
The Saturn Return framework was a comforting thought: that there was some sort of cosmic force supporting the emerging self, on a timeline that matched my own life’s more closely.
After sending Chani my birth time, place and date, she tells me that my Saturn is stationed in the seventh house of committed partnerships and relationships. (In her book, Chani explains houses as “the sets where the planets’ stories are lived out.”) So in my case, the shifts, tensions and “growth edges” of my Saturn Return played out in the realm of my close relationships.
“Another big thing about Saturn Returns is that it’s one of the first times that we need to psychologically stand on our own apart from our origins,” Chani says. “There’s this thing around the age of 30 where we’re like, ‘time is limited. … If I’m going to take responsibility for my life, I’m going to have to disappoint people.’ That’s the boundary, the separation, in a way.”
In those initial steps of self-definition, deconstructing the political and religious maps I’d grown up with, I had feared my parents’ disappointment. Self-authorship felt risky because I thought I might have to forfeit connection. What came to the surface during my Saturn Return was a road map to the work I’d need to do, the inner belonging I’d need to find, if I wanted my life to be mine.
Our Saturn remains in the same house in our chart over the course of our lives, which means we can expect the same themes to resurface and “rhyme” in our future Returns. But what will hopefully make each one feel different, Chani suggests, is perspective. If we’ve been integrating Saturn’s lessons, we’ll have some wisdom to share.
“When I was growing up / We had what we needed, shoes on our feet / But the world was as flat as a plate / And that’s okay / The things I was taught only took me so far / Had to figure the rest out myself / And then I found a deeper well.”
Throughout her Saturn-coded album, Musgraves is remembering, saying goodbye to, and ultimately thanking the things she’s outgrown: misaligned relationships, bad habits, outdated beliefs. And in that clearing, there’s a deeper exhale into herself: an existential sobriety and awareness of time passing, making everything glisten in a new light.
With some distance from Saturn’s crucible, there’s the hope of alchemizing our discoveries into a more congruent self.
It’s been almost seven years now since my Saturn Return began, so I’m approaching a phase Chani explains as the “First Quarter Square” — when we get a glimpse of the seeds we started planting during the “inception point” of those initial Return years. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll most likely be in bed nursing a newborn, due early December. The tangible sprouting of a shift that I trace back to my Saturn Return.
During my 2020 mushroom trip, I had the very clear feeling that a soul wanted to come through me. As I had been preoccupied with existential questions like how to become myself, this flicker of clarity confused and surprised me. On paper, according to the cultural scripts I had ingested, motherhood was the Ultimate Threat to the self I had been working so hard to find, let alone secure. But that download became a quiet anchor I’d return to, a vision that reached beyond my analytical mind — a dare to my rational fears. Something dim and unknowable seemed to be asking me to trust it. I decided to.
I have no idea what motherhood will actually feel like, of course, as it’s felt mostly conceptual even during pregnancy. But from what I can make of it so far, it seems to be the ultimate paradox: the world simultaneously contracted to its most intimate, atomic form, and the explosion of an entirely new universe. It’s a path that my Saturn Return prepared me for, a lesson that’s only now coming into focus: that perhaps the self can actually blossom, rather than wilt, in the containers we choose and author for ourselves. What matters is who’s doing the writing.
And then there are the parts we’d never choose to write ourselves: I never imagined I’d be bringing a kid into the world amidst a second Trump presidency, a dark rhyme that’s catapulted me back into an uncanny loop of my Saturn Return years. Perhaps the most I can do this time around is bring a more fortified self to the moment. To repurpose my disorientation and anger into something more actionable, solid and firm.
As Chani puts it, this seems to be the gift of Saturn’s invitation to self-authorship: “a sense of your own internal bone structure.”
Just when we reach the edge of what we can make out with the naked eye, another dimension of self appears. Another new threshold, inviting us to pass through, again.
Rebekah Pahl is a writer living in Los Angeles. She’s pursuing an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars and working on an essay collection exploring shifts in self during her Saturn Return.
Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in Aug. 1970.
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“You are my favorite customer,” Baz Luhrmann tells me on a recent Zoom call from the sunny Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. The director is on a worldwide blitz to promote his new film, EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert — which opens wide this week — and he says this, not to flatter me, but because I’ve just called his film a miracle.
See, I’ve never cared a lick about Elvis Presley, who would have turned 91 in January, had he not died in 1977 at the age of 42. Never had an inkling to listen to his music, never seen any of his films, never been interested in researching his life or work. For this millennial, Presley was a fossilized, mummified relic from prehistory — like a woolly mammoth stuck in the La Brea Tar Pits — and I was mostly indifferent about seeing 1970s concert footage when I sat down for an early IMAX screening of EPiC.
By the end of its rollicking, exhilarating 90 minutes, I turned to my wife and said, “I think I’m in love with Elvis Presley.”
“I’m not trying to sell Elvis,” Luhrmann clarifies. “But I do think that the most gratifying thing is when someone like you has the experience you’ve had.”
Elvis made much more of an imprint on a young Luhrmann; he watched the King’s movies while growing up in New South Wales, Australia in the 1960s, and he stepped to 1972’s “Burning Love” as a young ballroom dancer. But then, like so many others, he left Elvis behind. As a teenager, “I was more Bowie and, you know, new wave and Elton and all those kinds of musical icons,” he says. “I became a big opera buff.”
Luhrmann only returned to the King when he decided to make a movie that would take a sweeping look at America in the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s — which became his 2022 dramatized feature, Elvis, starring Austin Butler. That film, told in the bedazzled, kaleidoscopic style that Luhrmann is famous for, cast Presley as a tragic figure; it was framed and narrated by Presley’s notorious manager, Colonel Tom Parker, portrayed by a conniving and heavily made-up Tom Hanks. The dark clouds of business exploitation, the perils of fame, and an early demise hang over the singer’s heady rise and fall.
It was a divisive movie. Some praised Butler’s transformative performance and the director’s ravishing style; others experienced it as a nauseating 2.5-hour trailer. Reviewing it for Fresh Air, Justin Chang said that “Luhrmann’s flair for spectacle tends to overwhelm his basic story sense,” and found the framing device around Col. Parker (and Hanks’ “uncharacteristically grating” acting) to be a fatal flaw.
Personally, I thought it was the greatest thing Luhrmann had ever made, a perfect match between subject and filmmaker. It reminded me of Oliver Stone’s breathless, Shakespearean tragedy about Richard Nixon (1995’s Nixon), itself an underrated masterpiece. Yet somehow, even for me, it failed to light a fire of interest in Presley himself — and by design, I now realize after seeing EPiC, it omitted at least one major aspect of Elvis’ appeal: the man was charmingly, endearingly funny.
As seen in Luhrmann’s new documentary, on stage, in the midst of a serious song, Elvis will pull a face, or ad lib a line about his suit being too tight to get on his knees, or sing for a while with a bra (which has been flung from the audience) draped over his head. He’s constantly laughing and ribbing and keeping his musicians, and himself, entertained. If Elvis was a tragedy, EPiC is a romantic comedy — and Presley’s seduction of us, the audience, is utterly irresistible.
Unearthing old concert footage
It was in the process of making Elvis that Luhrmann discovered dozens of long-rumored concert footage tapes in a Kansas salt mine, where Warner Bros. stores some of their film archives. Working with Peter Jackson’s team at the post-production facility Park Road Post, who did the miraculous restoration of Beatles rehearsal footage for Jackson’s 2021 Disney+ series, Get Back, they burnished 50-plus hours of 55-year-old celluloid into an eye-popping sheen with enough visual fidelity to fill an IMAX screen. In doing so, they resurrected a woolly mammoth. The film — which is a creative amalgamation of takes from rehearsals and concerts that span from 1970 to 1972 — places the viewer so close to the action that we can viscerally feel the thumping of the bass and almost sense that we’ll get flecked with the sweat dripping off Presley’s face.
This footage was originally shot for the 1970 concert film Elvis: That’s The Way It Is, and its 1972 sequel, Elvis on Tour, which explains why these concerts were shot like a Hollywood feature: wide shots on anamorphic 35mm and with giant, ultra-bright Klieg lights — which, Luhrmann explains, “are really disturbing. So [Elvis] was very apologetic to the audience, because the audience felt a bit more self conscious than they would have been at a normal show. They were actually making a movie, they weren’t just shooting a concert.”
Luhrmann chose to leave in many shots where camera operators can be seen running around with their 16mm cameras for close-ups, “like they’re in the Vietnam War trying to get the best angles,” because we live in an era where we’re used to seeing cameras everywhere and Luhrmann felt none of the original directors’ concern about breaking the illusion. Those extreme close-ups, which were achieved by operators doing math and manually pulling focus, allow us to see even the pores on Presley’s skin — now projected onto a screen the size of two buildings.
The sweat that comes out of those pores is practically a character in the film. Luhrmann marvels at how much Presley gave in every single rehearsal and every single concert performance. Beyond the fact that “he must have superhuman strength,” Luhrmann says, “He becomes the music. He doesn’t mark stuff. He just becomes the music, and then no one knows what he’s going to do. The band do not know what he’s going to do, so they have to keep their eyes on him all the time. They don’t know how many rounds he’s going to do in ‘Suspicious Minds.’ You know, he conducts them with his entire being — and that’s what makes him unique.”
Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in Aug. 1970.
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It’s not the only thing. The revivified concerts in EPiC are a potent argument that Elvis wasn’t just a superior live performer to the Beatles (who supplanted him as the kings of pop culture in the 1960s), but possibly the greatest live performer of all time. His sensual, magmatic charisma on stage, the way he conducts the large band and choir, the control he has over that godlike gospel voice, and the sorcerer’s power he has to hold an entire audience in the palm of his hands (and often to kiss many of its women on the lips) all come across with stunning, electrifying urgency.
Shaking off the rust and building a “dreamscape”
The fact that, on top of it all, he is effortlessly funny and goofy is, in Luhrmann’s mind, essential to the magic of Elvis. While researching for Elvis, he came to appreciate how insecure Presley was as a kid — growing up as the only white boy in a poor Black neighborhood, and seeing his father thrown into jail for passing a bad check. “Inside, he felt very less-than,” says Luhrmann, “but he grows up into a physical Greek god. I mean, we’ve forgotten how beautiful he was. You see it in the movie; he is a beautiful looking human being. And then he moves. And he doesn’t learn dance steps — he just manifests that movement. And then he’s got the voice of Orpheus, and he can take a song like ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ and make it into a gospel power ballad.
“So he’s like a spiritual being. And I think he’s imposing. So the goofiness, the humor is about disarming people, making them get past the image — like he says — and see the man. That’s my own theory.”
Elvis has often been second-classed in the annals of American music because he didn’t write his own songs, but Luhrmann insists that interpretation is its own invaluable art form. “Orpheus interpreted the music as well,” the director says.
In this way — as in their shared maximalist, cape-and-rhinestones style — Luhrmann and Elvis are a match made in Graceland. Whether he’s remixing Shakespeare as a ’90s punk music video in Romeo + Juliet or adding hip-hop beats to The Great Gatsby, Luhrmann is an artist who loves to take what was vibrantly, shockingly new in another century and make it so again.
Elvis Presley in Las Vegas in Aug. 1970.
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Luhrmann says he likes to take classic work and “shake off the rust and go, Well, when it was written, it wasn’t classical. When it was created, it was pop, it was modern, it was in the moment. That’s what I try and do.”
To that end, he conceived EPiC as “an imagined concert,” liberally building sequences from various nights, sometimes inserting rehearsal takes into a stage performance (ecstatically so in the song “Polk Salad Annie”), and adding new musical layers to some of the songs. Working with his music producer, Jamieson Shaw, he backed the King’s vocals on “Oh Happy Day” with a new recording of a Black gospel choir in Nashville. “So that’s an imaginative leap,” says Luhrmann. “It’s kind of a dreamscape.”
On some tracks, like “Burning Love,” new string arrangements give the live performances extra verve and cinematic depth. Luhrmann and his music team also radically remixed multiple Elvis songs into a new number, “A Change of Reality,” which has the King repeatedly asking “Do you miss me?” over a buzzing bass line and a syncopated beat.
I didn’t miss Elvis before I saw EPiC — but after seeing the film twice now, I truly do.
“You kinda have this Wednesday Addams vibe going on.”
I shrieked.
I was wearing my best armor: a black dress that accentuated my curves, a striped bolero to cover the arms I’ve resented for years and black platform sandals displaying ruby toes. My dark hair was in wild, voluminous curls and my sultry makeup was finished with an inviting Chanel rouge lip.
I would’ve preferred the gentleman at the speed dating event had likened my efforts to, at least, Morticia, a grown woman. But in this crowd of men and women ages ranging from roughly 21 to 40, I suppose my baby face gave me away.
My mind flitted back to a conversation I had with my physical therapist about modern love: Dating in L.A. has become monotonous.
The apps were oversaturated and underwhelming. And it seemed more difficult than ever to naturally meet someone in person.
She told me about her recent endeavor in speed dating: events sponsoring timed one-on-one “dates” with multiple candidates. I applauded her bravery, but the conversation had mostly slipped my mind.
Two years later, I had reached my boiling point with Jesse, a guy I met online (naturally) a few months prior who was good on paper but bad in practice.
Knowing my best friend was in a similar situationship, I found myself suggesting a curious social alternative.
Much of my knowledge of speed dating came from cinema. It usually involved a down-on-her-luck hopeless romantic or a mature workaholic attempting to be more spontaneous in her dating life, sitting across from a montage of caricatures: the socially-challenged geek stumbling through his special interests; the arrogant businessman diverting most of his attention to his Blackberry; the pseudo-suave ladies’ man whose every word comes across rehearsed and saccharine.
Nevertheless, I was desperate for a good distraction. So we purchased tickets to an event for straight singles happening a few hours later.
Walking into Oldfield’s Liquor Room, I noticed that it looked like a normal bar, all dark wood and dim lighting. Except its patrons flanked the perimeter of the space, speaking in hushed tones, sizing up the opposite sex.
Suddenly in need of some liquid courage, we rushed back to the car to indulge in the shooters we bought on our way to the venue — three for $6. I had already surrendered $30 for my ticket and I was not paying for Los Angeles-priced cocktails. Ten minutes later, we were ready to mingle.
The bar’s back patio was decked out with tea lights and potted palm plants. House-pop music put me in a groove as I perused the picnic tables covered with conversation starters like “What’s your favorite sexual position?” Half-amused and half-horrified, I decided to use my own material.
We found our seats as the host began introductions. Each date would last two minutes — a chime would alert the men when it was time to move clockwise to the next seat. I exchanged hopeful glances with the women around me.
The bell rang, and I felt my buzz subside in spades as my first date sat down. This was really happening.
Soft brown eyes greeted me. He was polite and responsive, giving adequate answers to my questions but rarely returning the inquiry. I sensed he was looking through me and not at me, as if he had decided I wasn’t his type and was biding his time until the bell rang. I didn’t take it personally.
Bachelor No. 2 stood well over six feet with caramel-brown hair and emerald eyes. He oozed confidence and warmth when he spoke about how healing from an accident a few years prior inspired him to become a physical therapist.
I tried not to focus on how his story was nearly word-perfect to the one I heard him give the woman before me. He offered to show me a large surgery scar, rolling up his right sleeve to reveal the pale pink flesh — and a well-trained bicep. Despite his obvious good looks and small-town charm, something suspicious gnawed at me. I would later learn he had left the same effect on most of the women.
My nose received Bachelor No. 3 before my eyes. His spiced cologne quickly engulfing my senses. He had a larger-than-life presence, seeming to be a character himself, so I asked for his favorite current watch.
“I love ‘The Summer I Turned Pretty,’” he actually said.
“Really?”
“Oh yeah, it’s my favorite. Oh, and ‘Wednesday.’ You kinda have this Wednesday Addams vibe going on.”
I was completely thrown to hear this 40-something man’s favorite programs centered around teenage girls, and by his standards, I resembled one of them. Where was the host with the damn bell?
Although a few conversations clearly left impressions, most of the dates morphed into remnants of information like fintech, middle sibling, allergic to cats, etc. Perhaps two minutes was too short to spark genuine chemistry.
After a quick lap around the post-date mingling, we practically raced to the car. A millisecond after the doors closed, my friend said, “I think I’m going to call him.” I knew she wasn’t referring to any of the men we met tonight. The last few hours were all in vain. “And you should call Jesse.”
I scoffed at her audacity.
When I arrived home and called him, it only rang once.
The following three hours of witty banter and cheeky innuendos were bliss until the call ended on a low note, and I remembered why I tried speed dating in the first place.
Jesse and I had great chemistry but were ultimately incompatible. He preferred living life within his comfort zone while I craved adventure and variety. He couldn’t see past right now, and I was too busy planning the future to live in the moment.
Still, in a three-hour call, long before the topic of commitment soured things, we laughed at the mundanity of our day, traded wildest dreams for embarrassing anecdotes, and voiced amorous intentions that would make Aphrodite’s cheeks heat.
Why couldn’t I have had a conversation like that with someone at the event?
It’s possible I was hoping to find the perfect replica of my relationship with Jesse. But when I had the opportunity to meet someone new, I reserved my humor and my empathy.
Also, despite knowing Jesse and I weren’t a good match, I thought we had a “chance connection” that I needed to protect. In reality, if I had shown up to speed dating as my complete self, that would have been more than enough to stir sparks with a new flame.
It would be several more weeks before I was ready to release my attachment to Jesse. But when I did, I had a better appreciation for myself and my capacity for love.
The author is a multidisciplinary writer and mother based in Encino.
L.A. Affairs chronicles the search for romantic love in all its glorious expressions in the L.A. area, and we want to hear your true story. We pay $400 for a published essay. Email LAAffairs@latimes.com. You can find submission guidelines here. You can find past columns here.
Editor’s note: On April 3, L.A. Affairs Live, our new storytelling competition show, will feature real dating stories from people living in the Greater Los Angeles area. Tickets for our first event will be on sale starting Tuesday.
Warner Bros. Discovery said Thursday that it prefers the latest offer from rival Hollywood studio Paramount over a bid it accepted from Netflix.
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The Warner Bros. Discovery board announced late Thursday afternoon that Paramount’s sweetened bid to buy the entire company is “superior” to an $83 billion deal it had struck with Netflix for the purchase of its streaming services, studios, and intellectual property.
Netflix says it is pulling out of the contest rather than try to top Paramount’s offer.
“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid,” the streaming giant said in a statement.
Warner had rejected so many offers from Paramount that it seemed as though it would be a fruitless endeavor. Speaking on the red carpet for the BAFTA film awards last weekend, Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos dared Paramount to stop making its case publicly and start ponying up cash.
‘If you wanna try and outbid our deal … just make a better deal. Just put a better deal on the table,” Sarandos told the trade publication Deadline Hollywood.
Netflix promised that Warner Bros. would operate as an independent studio and keep showing its movies in theaters.
But the political realities, combined with Paramount’s owners’ relentless drive to expand their entertainment holdings, seem to have prevailed.
Paramount previously bid for all of Warner — including its cable channels such as CNN, TBS, and Discovery — in a deal valued at $108 billion. Earlier this week, Paramount unveiled a fresh proposal increasing its bid by a dollar a share.
On Thursday, hours before the Warner announcement, Sarandos headed to the White House to meet Trump administration officials to make his case for the deal.
The meetings, leaked Wednesday to political and entertainment media outlets, were confirmed by a White House official who spoke on condition he not be named, as he was not authorized to speak about them publicly.
President Trump was not among those who met with Sarandos, the official said.
While Netflix’s courtship of Warner stirred antitrust concerns, the Paramount deal is likely to face a significant antitrust review from the U.S. Justice Department, given the combination of major entertainment assets. Paramount owns CBS and the streamer Paramount Plus, in addition to Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and other cable channels.
The offer from Paramount CEO David Ellison relies on the fortune of his father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. And David Ellison has argued to shareholders that his company would have a smoother path to regulatory approval.
Not unnoticed: the Ellisons’ warm ties to Trump world.
Larry Ellison is a financial backer of the president.
David Ellison was photographed offering a MAGA-friendly thumbs-up before the State of the Union address with one of the president’s key Congressional allies: U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican.
Trump has praised changes to CBS News made under David Ellison’s pick for editor in chief, Bari Weiss.
The chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, told Semafor Wednesday that he was pleased by the news division’s direction under Weiss. She has criticized much of the mainstream media as being too reflexively liberal and anti-Trump.
“I think they’re doing a great job,” Carr said at a Semafor conference on trust and the media Wednesday. As Semafor noted, Carr previously lauded CBS by saying it “agreed to return to more fact-based, unbiased reporting.”
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