Ho, ho, ho! It’s a holiday tradition: Anonymous media executives make their 2025 industry predictions.
In honor of the 12 days of Christmas, we give you 12 predictions from some of the most powerful media and entertainment executives in the world, weighing in on the condition of anonymity so they can speak candidly about their visions of the year ahead. And then, because we have holiday cheer, we give you a bonus one. A baker’s dozen!
Looking back at 2024’s predictions, they were not as good as previous years. But there were some hits, or partial hits.
While Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max, Netflix and Disney didn’t all team up for the first significant streaming bundle, as one participant predicted last year, Max and Disney did join forces. TV broadcast station groups continued to pick off regional sports rights, as another executive anticipated. RedBird Capital didn’t quite acquire Paramount Global , but the private equity firm was part of the consortium with Skydance that announced a merger with the company in July.
As for other 2024 predictions, Nelson Peltz and Jay Rasulo did not win their activist campaign to join the Disney board; Disney CEO Bob Iger did not renew his contract beyond 2026, buy Candle Media or name Dana Walden his successor; and NBA media rights did not go to Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Apple — they went to Disney, NBCUniversal and Amazon .
Oh, and one more miss: While Comcast did announce a spinoff of most of its cable networks, it did not spin off NBCUniversal and merge it with Warner Bros. Discovery.
That’s a nice segue to this year’s predictions:
Executive 1: Comcast will acquire the studio and streaming assets of Warner Bros. Discovery and merge them with NBCUniversal
Second time’s the charm! Warner Bros. Discovery is separating its linear assets from the rest of the company. Comcast is spinning out most of its cable networks. It has to mean something, right?
Executive 2: Comcast will acquire Charter and spin off the rest of NBCUniversal
That’s right, Comcast may have SpinCo 1 and SpinCo 2! This executive predicts Comcast will test the Donald Trump regulatory administration and try to combine the two largest U.S. cable companies, 10 years after dropping its bid to buy Time Warner Cable — which used to be the second-largest U.S. cable provider before it was acquired by Charter — after concluding the government would block the deal.
Executive 3: Fox will acquire most of Warner Bros. Discovery’s assets
After selling the majority of its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019, Fox will shock the media world by again gaining scale, acquiring HBO, the movie studio, the Turner networks and the streaming assets of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to this executive.
For what it’s worth, another executive predicted Fox would sell, given the unknown future of the Murdoch family trust.
Executive 4: Dana Walden will leave Disney at year-end when she doesn’t get the CEO job
Disney has already said it plans to delay naming a new CEO until early 2026, so this prediction assumes the company will slightly move up the announcement. Walden, Disney’s co-chairman of Disney Entertainment, is the ultimate Hollywood insider who many view as the front-runner for the job. The board is taking its time vetting candidates after the handoff from Iger to Bob Chapek in 2020 did not go very well.
A second executive posited that NBCUniversal Entertainment and Studios chairman Donna Langley will be considered for the job as a challenge to Walden and other internal candidates.