For months, Hollywood has been guessing how Shari Redstone would play her cards to sell control of her once-sprawling Paramount Global empire. The potential breaking apart of a historic studio, the procession of suitors, the thousands of employees on edge and eventual inking of a multibillion-dollar agreement to merge Paramount with the relatively upstart Skydance Media founded by a deep-pocketed heir, David Ellison, has kept executives and producers wondering what’s next (a “go-shop” window ending Aug. 21 is the next deadline).

But soon enough, the M&A rumor mill may start to shift back over to Burbank, where Warner Bros. Discovery has been facing its questions about whether its asset mix — born of a $43 billion spin-off of Warners properties from AT&T to Discovery in 2022 — makes sense in a shifting entertainment landscape where a collection of linear cable brands like TNT, TBS, HLN etc. are ill-suited to rapid cord-cutting and an industry-wide march toward streaming.

In April, a two-year Reverse Morris Trust lockup window for M&A involving the company quietly passed and, days ago, CEO David Zaslav was in Sun Valley talking up the potential for the next presidential administration to have an “opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to be even better.”