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At long last, David Zaslav has officially put Warner Bros. Discovery up for sale—or, you know, initiated “a review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value” amid “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties.” Of course, WBD has really been on the block since Zaz announced his intention to split the company in two, and especially since Skydance’s David Ellison first expressed interest in folding the whole thing into his burgeoning media portfolio. To date, Ellison has made three offers, the most recent and highest of which came in at $23.50 a share, which Zaz rebuffed earlier this week. On Tuesday, he opted to canvass the rest of the field instead.

The Zaz endgame is pretty clear: sell to the highest bidder. And with Ellison still hovering below $25 a share, Zaz and the board will now try to convince shareholders that they can do better by selling each company post-split. As my partner Bill Cohan notes this week with typical prescience: “The nearly unanimous support of the Wall Street analyst community for Zaz’s split-up plan—at least while the Ellisons are in the low 20s—is significant. Not only will it inform Zaz’s board of directors and its bankers, it will also give WBD shareholders the backbone to stick with his process.” The ideal target for Zaz & Co., it seems, is closer to $30 a share.

That said, the promise of a post-split auction presumes demand beyond Paramount. At present, both Comcast and Netflix remain interested in the stand-alone Warner Bros. Streaming and Studios business, per sources familiar. Amazon is said to be in the exploratory stage, which essentially translates to due diligence. No one I’ve spoken to expects Apple or any other suitors to make a real offer. So it increasingly feels like the best-case scenario for Zaz is a Paramount vs. Comcast vs. Netflix or Amazon bidding war, versus the possibility that he proceeds with the split and then reinitiates this rodeo once again. But even that presumes that Comcast’s Brian Roberts isn’t merely trying to drive up the WBD price tag for Paramount, as he did to Disney with Fox; that Netflix co-C.E.O. Greg Peters is merely being strategic by repeatedly shooting down M&A speculation in public; and that Amazon will come to the table. Hard tea leaves.

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In any event, now that Zaz is betting on such an outcome, the Ellisons have to move to Phase 2 of the takeover strategy, which requires selling WBD shareholders on a different narrative and ever-so-subtly poisoning the waters for the competition. This is an area where the Ellisons’ decision last month to hire veteran antitrust guru Makan Delrahim as Paramount’s chief legal officer could be advantageous. (Indeed, they were likely looking around this corner when they hired him.) Delrahim, who led the Justice Department’s reviews of the Disney–Fox and Discovery–Scripps mergers, as well as the D.O.J.’s effort to block the AT&T–Time Warner deal, won’t merely guide the Ellisons through their own regulatory hurdles—he’ll also be able to highlight all the potential regulatory and political hurdles facing the competition.

The principal point Delrahim is likely to make is that Comcast faces greater regulatory scrutiny than Paramount because of concerns around vertical integration—after all, he made a similar argument against the AT&T–Time Warner deal during Trump I. The conventional wisdom on the Paramount side is that, just as Trump may be happy to reward the Ellisons given their close ties, he’d be reluctant to reward NBCUniversal in light of his feelings toward Roberts and how he’s been covered by NBC News and MSNBC.

The argument against a Netflix or an Amazon—again, assuming either intends to go the distance—may prove harder, but will center on scale. Netflix already has more than 300 million global subscribers, Amazon Prime around 250 million. A combined Paramount and WBD would get PSKY to 200 million at best, assuming minimal overlap. One conceit of the Ellisons’ grand strategy is that they’re saving the old Hollywood studios by keeping them competitive with the tech giants—albeit while they’re preparing to lay off 2,000 employees at Paramount later this month and aiming to consolidate two of Hollywood’s last remaining studios. Their argument will thus center on the idea that a competitive Paramount Skydance is better for the industry and consumers than a world dominated by a small handful of tech platforms.

In essence, Paramount is positioning itself as the safest bet for shareholders: the cleanest regulatory path, the most politically palatable deal partner, and the one actually fighting on behalf of Hollywood. Obviously, that argument would be a lot more compelling if the Ellisons ponied up more than $25 a share—which they can do, even if they don’t necessarily want to. Their play, of course, is to get the asset they want for the lowest possible price, which may require some creative thinking. In the course of my conversations this week, the most interesting piece of advice anyone offered the Ellisons was this: Call Zaz’s bluff, drop your offer, and watch what happens to the stock.