Paramount settles antitrust case with 12 states, clearing $110 bn Warner Bros. Discovery deal

Paramount Skydance settled the antitrust lawsuits brought by 12 state attorneys general on September 21, clearing the last obstacle to its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The settlement takes the form of a consent decree built entirely on behavioral remedies, and CEO David Ellison told staff in a memo that the company has "complete clearance for this merger" and is tentatively planning to close in roughly two weeks.

The commitments are concrete. Paramount must spend at least $300 million more a year on U.S. film production than it did in 2025, and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said the company will release at least 30 movies in each of the first two years and 32 a year for the following three, with at least four independent titles annually and at least 20% blockbusters, which he put at $1.5 billion of domestic movie spending at minimum over five years. Paramount and Warner Bros. must also keep negotiating distribution of their basic cable channels separately for five years, a trustee chosen by California will monitor compliance, and the combined company must stand up a news editorial independence board covering CBS News and CNN.

Bonta was careful to frame the outcome narrowly, saying the settlement "is not a vote of support for this merger; it is not a blessing of the broader merger". Critics agree for the opposite reason: former FTC chair Lina Khan argued that behavioral remedies "routinely fail" and that the stakes are higher than usual because sound journalism depends on open markets.

The market split the two sides of the deal. WBD rose 10.8% to $30.80 on volume of 233.71 million shares against a 34.68 million average, roughly 6.7 times normal, as the discount for deal risk came out of the stock. Acquirer PSKY fell 2.9% to $9.91, the ordinary pattern for a buyer once a contested deal becomes certain to close. Timing pressure helps explain the concession: a ticking fee of $650 million a quarter, about $7 million a day, was due to start October 1, and a trial set for March would have cost Paramount roughly $1.3 billion in such fees. What to watch now is whether the production and cable-separation obligations are actually met under trustee monitoring, and how the combined library reshapes competition with Netflix and Disney.