David Zaslav welcomes Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters as they visit the Warner Bros. lot on Dec. 17. Warner Bros. Discovery In a phone call hours before Netflix sealed the deal for Warner Bros. on Dec. 4, Ted Sarandos played hardball with David Zaslav: Sign a deal for Netflix to buy Warners today, or we're pulling out of the bidding. It was a message hammered home in an email that Netflix's attorneys at Skadden sent to their counterparts at Debevoise and Wachtell Lipton. "Our client's expectation is that we will be signed as soon as practicable this evening, and the deal announced before open of market tomorrow morning," the email reads. "We have been instructed by our client to convey that this is our best and final proposal and that if we are not done before open of market tomorrow morning, our proposal shall be deemed withdrawn, null and void. We will withdraw from your process, abandon pursuit of the transaction and terminate discussions." Related Stories Business The Last Hollywood Gold Mine: Why the Fight for Warner Bros. Is a Bidding War Business Netflix's Ted Sarandos, Greg Peters Visit Warner Bros. Studio Lot With David Zaslav The blunt email and fateful call from Netflix's co-CEO to Warner Bros. Discovery's CEO ultimately pushed the WBD board to make that final decision, a last-ditch text message from Paramount CEO David Ellison notwithstanding. The text from Ellison, in which he emphasized that their latest bid was not "best and final," was not enough to persuade the board, which was in the middle of meeting to discuss Netflix's final offer and its ultimatum, as it "did not present any actionable improved proposal for consideration and it would not have been appropriate to do so in the midst of the WBD Board's deliberations." The following morning, of course, Netflix announced its blockbuster $82.7 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros., in a move that stunned Hollywood. And it only took six weeks from Sarandos' first phone call to Zaslav on Oct. 16 to a signed agreement. The deal with Netflix came together fast, filings with the SEC show, with Paramount and Ellison pursuing the company for months before Netflix even considered entering the fray. But when they did, the race was on, and the price for Warners grew ever higher. The filing from Warner Bros. Discovery on Dec. 17 paints a picture of Netflix as a buttoned-down operation, quick to respond to concerns from the board, in contrast to Paramount, which the WBD board suggests was slow to make changes to its proposed bids (WBD, it is worth noting, is selling its shareholders on the Netflix deal in the filing, so it isn't a neutral party). Greg Peters, David Zaslav and Ted Sarandos on the Warner Bros. lot on Dec. 17. Warner Bros. Discovery The filings frame Sarandos as the Netflix counterpart to Zaslav, a dynamic that makes sense with Netflix's other co-CEO Greg Peters known as the product guru, rather than the programming guru. But did Sarandos have to persuade Peters to go along with the deal? "I think that we assumed we might come in with different perspectives on it as well," Peters told CNBC Dec. 17, when asked whether he and Sarandos had a difference of opinion on the Warners deal. In fact, it was the hard data analysis on Warners that got the co-CEOs aligned on the deal. "We did the work, and really the work speaks for itself, which is, you get in and you actually build the models, you understand, 'how would these titles contribute?'" Peters continued, noting that the company is constantly looking at the data to justify licensing deals. "We have a very elaborate, deep understanding of how that works. When you've got that that model, then you do the hard work and you beat it up and you challenge yourself on all the assumptions. But when you conclude at the end of the day that there is a tremendous amount of value creation in this kind of deal for our members, the people that we serve, and for the creative community as well, we looked at it and we said, we're excited both to move forward." And the filings indicate that they moved forward quickly. Netflix's first official bid arrived Nov. 20, just over a month after Sarandos first called Zaslav to express interest. Samuel Di Piazza, the chairman of the WBD board, convened a meeting the following day to discuss the bids from Netflix, Paramount, "Company A" (Comcast) and "Company C." (That firm, "Company C," has yet to be publicly disclosed.) The attendees of the meeting agreed that "the Netflix bid offered superior value and a higher degree of certainty compared to the PSKY bid, and that based on Netflix's comments on initial term sheets they were expected to cooperate with the planned spin-off of the WBD Global Linear Networks Business in a straightforward manner without requiring material changes in planning," but they wanted to keep Comcast and Paramount engaged in the process. On Nov. 22, WBD's senior management and advisors and Netflix's senior management and advisors met, where WBD suggested