David Zaslav, president and CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery, has now sold roughly $200 million worth of stock since the media company clinched a deal to be acquired by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance earlier this year.
Zaslav’s latest sales were of 194,999 shares of WBD worth $5,464,567.73 on Aug. 14 and 773,173 shares with a value of $21,655,292. Those were handled on his behalf by Fidelity Brokerage Services, according to a company filings with the SEC. That came after the exec sold $59.47 million of stock in July and $114 million March.
Zaslav adopted an SEC Rule 10b5-1 trading arrangement on March 12, 2026, with a termination date of Aug. 14, 2026, as WBD disclosed in its 10-Q filing for the first quarter of the year. Under that plan, which allows company insiders to establish a written plan to buy or sell stock, a set number of Zaslav’s shares were specified to be sold by the broker upon reaching certain pricing targets.
Paramount is facing a March 2027 trial date in the antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 state attorneys general seeking to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. The states allege the combined company would have excessive control over the market for theatrical releases and in basic cable. Paramount’s lawyers called the states’ lawsuit “one of the weakest merger challenges in modern antitrust history.” That said, Paramount is eager to settle lawsuit prior to the trial, given that it will begin accruing $7 million per day in ticking fees payable to WBD shareholders starting Oct. 1. Ellison last week told his senior leadership team Paramount will start the process of leaving California on Oct. 1, beginning with its headquarters, in an effort to cut costs if the states don’t engage in settlement talks.
If the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger closes, Zaslav is set to receive a “golden parachute” payout of at least $550 million.
Zaslav engineered Discovery Communications’ acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T in a deal that closed in 2022. He has been among the highest-compensation CEOs in the media biz. In 2025, his pay package totaled $165 million. That included a one-time grant of stock options valued at $109.6 million, which the company awarded to Zaslav on June 12, 2025, for his work on the company’s plan to split into two publicly traded entities (one housing WB’s HBO, HBO Max and studios business, and the other largely composed of the linear TV network business along with Discovery+ and other assets). In symbolic moves, WBD shareholders voted against Zaslav’s golden-parachute package and his 2025 compensation plan.