By WYATTE GRANTHAM-PHILIPS, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Warner Bros. is telling shareholders to reject a takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, saying that a rival bid from Netflix will be better for customers and creators.

“Today the Warner Bros. Discovery Board sent a clear message to you, their stockholders,” the company said in a letter to shareholders. “The WBD Board urges you to reject Paramount Skydance’s unsolicited, inferior and illusory tender offer.”

Paramount went hostile with its bid last week, asking shareholders to reject the deal with Netflix favored by the board of Warner Bros.

Paramount is offering $30 per Warner share to Netflix’s $27.75. Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery slipped 1% in early trading Wednesday, to $28.60. Paramount Skydance fell 4.3% while Netflix shares rose 2.4%.

A Warner Bros. merger with either company would alter the landscape in Hollywood and will face intense scrutiny from U.S. regulators as it would impact movie making, consumer streaming platforms and, in Paramount’s case, the news landscape.

Paramount’s bid isn’t off the table altogether. While Wednesday’s letter to shareholders means Paramount’s is not the offer favored by the board at Warner Bros., shareholders can still decide to tender their shares in favor of Paramount’s offer for the entire company — including cable stalwarts CNN and Discovery.

Unlike Paramount’s bid, the offer from Netflix does not include buying the cable operations of Warner Bros. An acquisition by Netflix, if approved by regulators and shareholders, will close only after Warner completes its previously announced separation of its cable operations.

Paramount on Wednesday affirmed its offer from last week and urged Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders to tell the company that they prefer Paramount’s “superior offer.”

“I have been encouraged by the feedback we have received from WBD shareholders who clearly understand the benefits of our offer,” Paramount CEO and Chairman David Ellison said. “We will continue to move forward to deliver this transaction, which is in the best interest of WBD shareholders, consumers, and the creative industries.”

Paramount has claimed it made six different bids that Warner leadership rejected before announcing its deal with Netflix on Dec. 5. Only after that did it take its offer directly to Warner’s shareholders.

Critics of Netflix’s deal say that combining the massive streaming company with Warner’s HBO Max would give it overwhelming market dominance, whereas the Paramount+ streaming service is far smaller.

“This is something that we’ve heard for a long time—including when we started the streaming business,” Netflix co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos said in a filing through Warner Bros. “Our stance then and now is the same—we see this as a win for the entertainment industry, not the end of it.”

Bids from both Netflix and Paramount have raised alarm for what they could mean for film and TV production. While Netflix has agreed to uphold Paramount’s contractual obligations for theatrical releases, critics have pointed to its past business model and reliance on online releases. Yet Paramount and Warner Bros. are two of the “big five” legacy studios left in Hollywood today.

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Paramount’s attempt to buy Warner’s cable networks and news business would also bring CBS and CNN under the same roof. In addition to further accelerating media consolidation, that could raise questions about shifts in editorial control — as seen at CBS News both leading up to and following Skydance’s $8 billion purchase of Paramount, which it completed in August.

Paramount Skydance did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press early Wednesday.

U.S. President Donald Trump has already been vocal about his future involvement in the deal, indicating that politics will play a role in regulatory approval.

Trump previously said that Netflix’s deal “could be a problem” because of the potential for an outsized control of the market. The Republican president also has a close relationship with Oracle’s billionaire founder Larry Ellison — the father of Paramount’s CEO, whose family trust is also heavily backing the company’s bid to buy Warner.

Affinity Partners, an investment firm run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, previously said it would invest in the Paramount deal, too. But on Tuesday, the firm announced that it would be dropping out of the bid.

Foreign sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar are also backing Paramount’s bid with billions in funding, which some analysts say should be drawing more scrutiny.

“The same U.S. officials and regulators who’ve sounded alarms about China’s influence on TikTok should be crying foul here,” said Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, a market research company. “The stakes on WBD’s fate are higher and wider-reaching than a single short-form video app.”

Warner Bros. continues to insist that the offer from Netflix is more solid.

“There are no contingencies, no foreign sovereign wealth funds, and no stock collateral or personal loans,” it said in its letter to investors. “We are a scaled company with a +$400 billion market cap and a strong investment grade balance sheet. As (Warner Bros.) said, the (Paramount Skydance) offer has “numerous risks and uncertainties” associated with it, among which are (Paramount’s) financial condition and creditworthiness.”

AP Business Writer Matt Ott contributed to this story from Washington.

By KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON (AP) — Four centrist Republicans broke with Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday and signed onto a Democratic-led petition that will force a House vote on extending for three years an enhanced pandemic-era subsidy that lowers health insurance costs for millions of Americans.

The stunning move comes after House Republican leaders pushed ahead with a health care bill that does not address the soaring monthly premiums that millions of people will soon endure as the tax credits for those who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act expire at year’s end.

Democrats led by Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York needed 218 signatures to force a floor vote on their bill, which would extend the subsides for three years.

Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, Robert Bresnahan and Ryan Mackenzie, all from Pennsylvania, and Mike Lawler of New York signed on Wednesday morning, pushing it to the magic number of 218. A vote on the subsidy bill could come as soon as January under House rules.

“Unfortunately, it is House leadership themselves that have forced this outcome.” Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

Origins of a Republican revolt

The revolt against GOP leadership came after days of talks centered on the health care subsidies.

Johnson, R-La., had discussed allowing more politically vulnerable GOP lawmakers a chance to vote on bills that would temporarily extend the subsidies while also adding changes such as income caps for beneficiaries. But after days of discussions, the leadership sided with the more conservative wing of the party’s conference, which has assailed the subsidies as propping up a failed ACA marketplace.

House Republicans pushed ahead Wednesday a 100-plus-page health care package without the subsidies, instead focusing on long-sought GOP proposals designed to expand insurance coverage options for small businesses and the self-employed.

Fitzpatrick and Lawler tried to add a temporary extension of the subsidies to the bill, but were denied.

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“Our only request was a floor vote on this compromise, so that the American People’s voice could be heard on this issue. That request was rejected. Then, at the request of House leadership I, along with my colleagues, filed multiple amendments, and testified at length to those amendments,” Fitzpatrick said. “House leadership then decided to reject every single one of these amendments.

“As I’ve stated many times before, the only policy that is worse than a clean three-year extension without any reforms, is a policy of complete expiration without any bridge,” Fitzpatrick said.

By DAVID BILLER

ROME (AP) — Rome opened two subway stations on Tuesday — one deep beneath the Colosseum — that mix the modernity of high-tech transport with artifacts from an ancient era.

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Commuters and tourists entering the station beside the iconic amphitheater can view displays of ceramic vases and plates, stone wells and suspended buckets, as well as the ruins of a cold plunge pool and thermal bath from a first-century dwelling. Screens show the excavation process — serving both to delight archaeology enthusiasts, and justify why it has taken so long to open the station.

The multibillion-euro Metro C subway line has been in the works for two decades but has been slowed by bureaucratic and funding delays and, crucially, the archaeological excavations necessary, given the underground ruins of imperial Roman and medieval civilizations in its way.

“The challenge was … building it under such a large amount of groundwater and at the same time preserving all the archaeological finds that we found during the excavation, and all this while preserving everything that is above,” said Marco Cervone, construction manager for the consortium building the subway line, led by Webuild.

The total cost of the line’s 31 stations — three-quarters of which are now operational — will reach around 7 billion euros ($8.3 billion) and be completed by 2035, according to the press office of the city-owned company that has contracted the works.

Rome was inaugurating another station on Tuesday, Porta Metronia, located one stop away from the one beside the Colosseum and likewise at a depth of 30 meters (around 100 feet).

It features a nearly 260-foot military barracks dating to the start of the second century, found at a depth between 22 and 39 feet, according to Simona Moretta, the scientific director of the excavation.

“Surety that it was a military building is given by the fact that the entrances to the rooms are not facing each other, but are offset, so that the soldiers could leave the rooms and get in line without colliding in the corridor,” the archaeologist told reporters.

Soldiers would either have been part of the emperor’s guard or stationed there for city security, she added.

There’s also a home with well-preserved frescoes and mosaics. A museum within the station will be opened in the future, Moretta said.

Digging near the center of Rome means coming in the contact with three millennia of civilizations built atop one another. So far, the consortium building Line C has found more than 500,000 artifacts, according to WeBuild.

In order to work in the delicate archaeological area, the company has employed techniques including freezing the ground to stabilize soil, as well as so-called sacrificial diaphragms — concrete walls built perpendicular to perimeter walls that are demolished as excavation advances.

As the subway line continues onward past the Colosseum, it will run underneath more of the world’s most important cultural heritage sites — Trajan’s Column and the Basilica of Maxentius, the largest building in the Roman Forum — as well as some of Rome’s prized Renaissance palaces, churches and the Vatican.

The next stop along the line is Piazza Venezia, the veritable heart of Rome’s center. Subway cars will arrive at a depth of 48 meters (157 feet) when it opens in 2033, Cervone said.

Once completed, Line C will run a total of 18 miles, of which 12 miles will be underground, and carry up to 800,000 passengers daily.

Tourists planning to visit the Colosseum and other sites in Rome’s historic center will be able to bypass the eternal city’s notoriously snarled surface traffic — made even worse in recent years by the construction projects themselves.

Paolo Santalucia contributed to this report.