Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television
The acquisition is moving forward, and for Netflix subscribers, the benefits are coming soon. Despite the deal not being expected to close until next year, Warner Bros. Television has officially opened the licensing doors. Heavy hitters from the WB television archives (both old and new) are crossing the aisle in droves, suggesting that as the corporate machinery prepares for the merger, Netflix is ​​already providing a home for these shows.
It’s unclear when exactly a deal will be struck for all these new series joining Netflix in this latest licensing wave. We, along with other Netflix trackers, have seen an increase in the number of pages for these shows that have been activated (i.e., are not redirecting to the homepage) since November 2025. Netflix declined to comment and generally does not provide details on licensed pickups.
While this trend with Warner Bros. Television is certainly interesting, given the ongoing acquisitions since the December announcement, it’s a trend we’ve seen with all distributors in recent years. While during the height of the so-called “streaming wars” we saw a massive decline in licensing as distributors withdrew their titles for the sake of exclusivity, strategies in this area have reversed course and, arguably, over the years Netflix’s library has been even stronger than in the heyday when Netflix first launched and appeared (Emphasis on this word!) To have everything.
Warner Bros. television shows added to Netflix US
In the US, 2025 alone was quite busy for WBTV pickup, with the following series added:
- animal kingdom
- blind spot
- Castle Rock
- How to Make It in America (HBO Original)
- Mother
- close to
- West Wing
It continued until 2026, beginning with the arrival of the recently canceled NBC series found At the beginning of the year and D.C. teen titans. This is in addition to pickup the Lying Game, Rizzoli and Isles, south country, Veronica Mars, prodigal son, FollowingAnd 11.22.63.
Some more heavy hitters are on the schedule for February 2026:
- suburban
- night court
- search party
- what i like about you
And there will undoubtedly be more in the coming months.
international additions
Image Credit: Warner Bros. Television
For those outside the United States, shipping is just as extensive. In addition to the above titles, Netflix has secured the rights to a bunch of WB procedurals and sitcom classics, presumably because the US rights to many of these are currently locked up elsewhere.
The following titles are being prepared for international territories:
- smallville
- 2 Broke Girls
- the Vampire Diaries
- divine
- bones
- er
- everwood
- the amazing World of Gumball
- rick and morty (re-extended license)
Why such a big licensing race with Warner Bros. Television? There is no public reason for this yet, nor do we know exactly when all these events occurred, but there are many reasons why Netflix likes licensing and why others like licensing.
For Netflix, their No. 1 metric is engagement. They’re an entertainment and tech company, but they live and die by engagement. Most of Warner Bros. Television’s library are all known IPs and have the potential to attract attention, and in the case of many long-running shows, some will attract tens of hours of attention if played from beginning to end. It is also being speculated that it is now giving Netflix additional data on which shows from the distributor work and which do not, when and how the studio sits under their banner.
For distributors, this is a good opportunity to get additional cash for the balance sheet and perhaps squeeze more money from titles that are not performing so well on their own platforms, in the case of Warner Bros., HBO Max. We’re not seeing HBO’s hottest shows coming; Rather, we’re looking at older titles that weren’t performing or new titles that, if they performed well on Netflix, could have been renewed like this manifesto back in the day (although the chances of this happening are relatively low).
That sentiment was echoed in an article by veteran Leslie Goldberg of The Unclewho wrote about the increase in licensing and cited a source as saying that studios are licensing to Netflix to “expose titles to larger audiences and, in some cases, give them a second life.”
We should also note that most of these shows are licensed, as we’re told, on a single-year basis.
It is not that only Warner Bros. is giving large numbers of licenses to Netflix. As announced during Q4 2025 earnings, Netflix is ​​set to license at least 20 shows from Paramount in the near future, in addition to continued pickups from AMC as part of its refreshed August 2025 deal. MGM Television is next, plus we’ve also seen Disney licenses over the years, such as scam And solar contrast Recent drop, as well as several other smaller pickups from distributors around the world and country-specific licensing in international territories (such as ITV and BBC pickups in the UK).
In fact, let’s put some numbers on this. In 2025, Netflix added more than 750 series, totaling more than 11,500 episodes. Of those 11,500, just over 8,000 (70%) are licensed TV episodes. This shouldn’t be surprising, given that Netflix Originals have a lower episode count than last year’s licensed series and that Netflix gets licensed series in bulk, but it still represents a significant amount of runtime added to the Netflix library, which now sits at nearly 8,000 individual titles.
This licensing increase extends to films as well. MGM films are beginning to appear on Netflix in the United States for the first time in several years, and following their acquisition by Amazon, the James Bond film collection is the most notable of the films added so far, although addams family, Licorice PizzaAnd many more have been added in the US and beyond. Netflix now has first-window deals in the US with Universal and Sony, as well as licenses from almost all of them, including previous holdout, 20th Century Fox. The only major hurdle now appears to be “core” Disney.
Even smaller distributors like A24 Movies have been popping in and out of Netflix US regularly for the past few years. Additionally, we regularly see titles being added from Neon and Bleecker Street, as well as licensing for SVOD premiere and indie label verticals.
We’ll, of course, be keeping track of all the licensed pickups arriving via our Netflix News section, and we’ll also be tracking all the new and coming-soon via our respective sections as well.