Paramount's pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery is usually described as a fight over films. It reads more like a fight over names. In a joint release on 27 February 2026, Paramount and WBD said the transaction valued WBD at an enterprise value of $110 billion, and set out what the combined company would hold: "popular franchises such as Game of Thrones, Mission Impossible, Harry Potter, Top Gun, the DC Universe and SpongeBob SquarePants". Those are more than titles. They are franchises with films attached, and much of their value is what can be licensed from them.
None of it has closed. Paramount said on 14 August 2026 that it had "satisfied all regulatory clearances required under the merger agreement". The review behind that line spanned 68 countries, by the company's own account. What is left is litigation: California and 11 other state attorneys general are still in court, and the Writers Guild of America West and East filed suit on 14 July 2026. A stipulation in federal court now holds the two companies apart until a ruling on the merits or 1 June 2027, according to the Colorado attorney general's office.
A licence taken in 2012 is still producing new titles
While the lawyers argue, a brand from a comparable shelf has been quietly earning. Light & Wonder announced on 1 June 2026 that Willy Wonka: Sweet Selection was "the 12th WILLY WONKA-themed game launched by Light & Wonder since acquiring the license in 2012". Twelve games in 14 years, built on characters and elements that remain the property of Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Ryan Scott, a senior vice president at the supplier, gave the reason in the same release: the brand "has remained one of the most recognizable branded franchises on casino floors for more than a decade".
Those machines are no longer the only place the licence appears. In July 2023 the supplier and Warner Bros. Discovery Global Themed Entertainment expanded their partnership to take the licensed titles online, starting with Willy Wonka: World of Wonka. Online, the studio's name stops being how a game is filed. It is grouped by what it is rather than by whose name it carries, under a heading written in the market's own language. In the Netherlands, reel-based games are played under the Dutch category name gokkasten online. The film trademark that carried a game there is no part of that name.
Rights now travel from games to film as well
The same arithmetic runs in reverse. Kotaku reported on 24 July 2026 that Atari had signed adaptation rights with Universal Pictures covering ten properties: Asteroids, Adventure, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Crystal Castles, Millipede, Missile Command, Yars' Revenge and Pong. Atari's chairman and chief executive, Wade Rosen, framed the deal around durability rather than nostalgia: "For more than five decades, Atari has created games and worlds that have remained part of popular culture long after their original release." Pong is two paddles and a ball, and it is now a film property.
Neither side of that trade is really about the work. Universal is not buying a screenplay but adaptation rights to properties audiences know, much as Light & Wonder licensed a brand in 2012. That is a financing argument rather than a creative one, and financing is the side that can be counted: MovieMeter has ranked every James Bond film by box office success. Whether a familiar name makes the next film good is a question no ledger answers.
A brand is worth relicensing because it travels well, and what travels with it is somebody else's rulebook. A film name can move onto a ride or into a game cabinet, but it arrives under rules the studio did not write. In the Netherlands, for instance, one registration with Cruks, the national self-exclusion register, means a player can no longer gamble at legal Dutch providers, online or on land, for a minimum of six months. Those conditions come with the market, they exist because play is meant to stay entertainment rather than a way to chase money, and they stop at the Dutch border.
What survives is the name, not the print
Here is the catch for anyone who cares about the pictures more than the ledgers. A brand that keeps earning can give its owner an incentive to renew the rights, restore the prints and leave the title where a viewer can find it. A studio has a reason to keep Willy Wonka licensable and little reason to remaster a picture with no brand attached, and most of any library is the second kind. Whoever ends up owning the WBD shelf inherits both, and only one comes with a reason to stay in circulation.
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