Sony is not interested in acquiring Warner
As Sony holds the movie rights to Spider-Man, it would mean that the Japanese giant would own both Spidey and Batman.
About five years ago, acquiring game studios became the industry's go-to power move, and it felt like the giants, led by Embracer Group and Microsoft, were literally vacuuming the market, with no company too big for a takeover. Many were shocked when Microsoft acquired Bethesda, and just a year and a half later, it became clear that they also wanted Activision Blizzard.
Since then, things have calmed down somewhat, and several acquisitions have proven to be questionable after well-known developers left and founded their own indie companies instead. But we're not quite done yet. EA recently went under the hammer, and Warner said a couple of days ago it would consider being acquired. We know that Paramount is interested, and it is said that Sony has also been tempted, something that would have been a significant addition to the film side of the company and make Mortal Kombat and Batman first-party titles for the gaming division.
But... it doesn't look like that's going to happen. In an interview with Nikkei (thanks PushSquare), Sony boss Hiroki Totoki says the company is not interested in such an acquisition:
"Right now, we don't want to do a big Hollywood M&A deal. We want to build a solid base in our strengths of anime and games."
Totoki believes that there are other markets with potentially better growth prospects, citing the following example:
"The global market for anime is just dawning right now and will continue to grow by double digits for a while."
In short, it does not seem interesting for Sony to take over Warner, but wouldn't it have been exciting to see both Batman and Spider-Man under the same roof?
