Warner Bros.

• 1. Introduction

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  Since the 4th of May 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery has used a new logo for the Warner Bros. Pictures film studio and Warner Bros. Television Studios. The mark belongs to a company that is only the latest owner of the name. Warner Bros. is less a single company than a brand carried by a string of American media businesses. Film, television, animation, music, books and cable have all worn it at different times. Which of those businesses kept the name, and which gave it up? How did one family's surname pass through so many mergers and sales? And who actually owns the studio that began it all?

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• 2. The Warner Brothers

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  On the 4th of April 1923, the brothers Harry, Albert, Sam and Jack Warner founded Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. The new company replaced Warner Features Company, which the family had started in 1910. Jack Warner took full control of the studio in 1956. By then the family firm had grown well beyond films, and its structure was about to change hands more than once. The first of those changes arrived in 1967.

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• 3. Studios Within the Studio

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  Warner Bros. Cartoons, which ran from 1929 to 1963, was the studio's first animation division. A new unit, Warner Bros. Animation, opened in 1980. Warner Bros. Pictures Animation followed in 2013. Television took a different route. Warner Bros. Television Studios dates to 1955, a year before Jack Warner took sole charge of the company. Music was a third branch. Warner Bros. Music handled music publishing. Its recording side would later become a company of its own, with a very different fate from the film studio.

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• 4. A Buying Spree

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  In 1967, Seven Arts Productions merged with Warner Bros. Pictures, Inc. to create Warner Bros.-Seven Arts. Two years later, Kinney National Company bought that combined business. The purchase was part of a wider spree. Kinney also acquired National Periodical Publications, the predecessor of DC Comics. It took on Television Communications Corporation, the predecessor of Time Warner Cable, and Paperback Library, the predecessor of Warner Books. Kinney then spun off its non-media assets and renamed itself Warner Communications. In 1990, Warner Communications merged with Time Inc. to form Time Warner. The corporate parent went through other names too, including Time Warner Entertainment and AOL Time Warner.

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• 5. Shedding the Name

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  On the 3rd of December 2002, Time Warner placed its film and television assets inside a new subsidiary called Warner Bros. Entertainment. Soon afterward the group began breaking apart. In the mid-2000s, Time Warner spun off or sold several divisions that carried Warner names. Warner Music Group became independent in 2004. Its flagship, Warner Records, was once called Warner Bros. Records. Time Warner Cable was later acquired by Charter Communications. Warner Books went to Hachette Livre. Warner Chappell Music and Time Warner Telecom were also spun off. Warner Music Group is now the only corporation still using the Warner name, while the other former subsidiaries have dropped it.

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• 6. New Owners

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  On the 15th of June 2018, AT&T acquired Time Warner, which by then was much reduced in scope. AT&T renamed it WarnerMedia. The arrangement lasted less than four years. On the 8th of April 2022, AT&T sold WarnerMedia to Discovery, Inc., and the two combined to form Warner Bros. Discovery. As of 2026, the motion picture and television assets that descend from the 1923 studio sit inside that company.

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