In 2016, AT&T announced its intention to buy Time-Warner for $85.4 billion, but in 2017 the US Department of Justice opposed it and tried to block the acquisition. While this was going on, another company pooled the money, and was willing to jump in to buy Time-Warner if that deal had stalled.

As you can imagine (maybe not very difficult considering the headline), this company was none other than Activision Blizzard King. This would have made them grow more than double, and it is not entirely clear why they would have been interested. In an interview with Variety, the head of Activision Blizzard, Bobby Kotickrevealed the details of the story and told it like this:

“We raised all the capital and were ready to act in case AT&T couldn’t close the deal.”

He also explained the idea behind:

“We would take their intellectual property and turn it into video games. They would take our intellectual property and turn it into film and television, and we would have an extraordinary company.”

Time-Warner (today known as Warner Bros. Discovery) owns a massive number of franchises, including all of DC, but also video game series like Mortal Kombat, which means they would have become Activision Blizzard brands instead. It’s hard to imagine how different things would have been in that scenario.

At present, things continue to change for the company, since Microsoft is the one that is trying to buy Activision Blizzard. So far 38 countries have approved it, with the United Kingdom being the only one that has refused, something that Microsoft will try to appeal next month. The deal is also expected to receive the go-ahead from the US Federal Trade Commission.