Hollywood’s newest media giant to be named Warner Bros. Discovery

Discovery plans to name its proposed new company Warner Bros. Discovery, following its planned merger with WarnerMedia.

The transaction, which was announced last month, is a long way from being completed. The proposed $43-billion tie-up needs the approval of regulators, but Discovery is continuing its outreach to Hollywood. On Tuesday, the New York company said it intends to lean into the historic roots of the Burbank-based Warner Bros. after the merger is completed in mid-2022.

“The Warner Bros. Discovery name will honor, celebrate and elevate the world’s most-storied creative studio in the world with the high quality, global nonfiction storytelling heritage of Discovery,” the company said in a statement.

Two weeks ago, AT&T startled Wall Street — and much of Hollywood — when it announced that it was getting out of the entertainment business just three years after the Dallas telecommunications giant bought the legendary Time Warner Inc. for $85 billion plus debt.

After AT&T took over the company in June 2018, it changed the name that had long celebrated the marriage of the iconic Time Inc. magazine empire with the nearly 100-year-old Warner Bros. studio. AT&T picked WarnerMedia as a nod to its media holdings, and because the Time Inc. portion of the company had been cleaved out of the company. The Time Warner entertainment company was frequently confused with Time Warner Cable, which has since been absorbed by Charter Communications and provides TV and internet service to consumers.

WarnerMedia was clean and succinct.

Although Discovery executives will manage the proposed new entity, more than two-thirds of the company will be composed of the WarnerMedia assets, including HBO, HBO Max, Warner Bros. studio, CNN, TNT, TBS and Cartoon Network.

So Discovery is taking second billing, as was the case when General Electric merged its NBC assets with much of the Universal entertainment portfolio. That company, now owned by Comcast, is called NBCUniversal.

The Warner Bros. Discovery logo will include the name amid puffy white clouds (reminiscent of the old DreamWorks SKG signature) and contain the tagline: “the stuff that dreams are made of.”

Discovery said the phrase was borrowed from a famous line in the iconic film “The Maltese Falcon,” and will pay “additional homage to the rich legacy of Warner Bros. and the focus of what the proposed company will be about.”

“We love the new company’s name because it represents the combination of Warner Bros.’ fabled hundred year legacy of creative, authentic storytelling and taking bold risks to bring the most amazing stories to life, with Discovery’s global brand that has always stood brightly for integrity, innovation and inspiration,” Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav said in a statement.

Zaslav will run the new entity.