{"id":417101,"date":"2026-07-29T21:43:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:43:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/417101\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T21:43:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T21:43:08","slug":"california-is-suing-to-preserve-hollywoods-decline-orange-county-register","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/417101\/","title":{"rendered":"California is suing to preserve Hollywood\u2019s decline \u2013 Orange County Register"},"content":{"rendered":"

In an Oakland courtroom earlier this month, lawyers battling over Paramount Skydance\u2019s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery spent part of a\u00a0hearing<\/a>\u00a0debating whether \u201cObsession\u201d is technically a blockbuster. The 12 states suing to stop the deal have staked their\u00a0case<\/a>\u00a0on a market for \u201canticipated blockbusters\u201d \u2014 films expected, before release, to clear $100 million at the box office, a bet they say only the five major studios can consistently place. By that yardstick, a horror picture\u00a0made<\/a>\u00a0for $750,000 that has grossed north of $400 million worldwide is not a blockbuster, because nobody saw it coming. And when Paramount\u2019s lawyers pointed to Apple\u2019s \u201cF1,\u201d the states\u2019 counsel\u00a0answered<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cApple makes cell phones, not movies.\u201d That will come as news to anyone who saw Apple\u2019s marketing spend last summer.<\/p>\n

Market definition is the whole case. The states need a version of this business in which only five companies can compete, and the box office keeps declining to cooperate: Amazon, Lionsgate, Focus and A24 have all\u00a0placed<\/a>\u00a0pictures in this year\u2019s top 10. A market that must be gerrymandered around \u201cObsession\u201d is not a market. It is a theory with an exemption policy.<\/p>\n

On July 20, Judge Araceli Mart\u00ednez-Olgu\u00edn paused the deal with a temporary\u00a0restraining order<\/a>, crediting their evidence on wide-release distribution. Then, last week, Paramount\u00a0agreed<\/a>\u00a0not to close at all until five days after a trial verdict \u2014 or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first \u2014 and the injunction hearing came off the calendar. A pause by agreement is not a verdict. Note which market did the work: the states\u2019 own\u00a0complaint<\/a>\u00a0puts the merged company\u2019s wide-release share\u00a0around 27%<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 shy of the 30% that antitrust doctrine long treats as presumptively illegal. The scarier numbers live in the \u201cblockbuster\u201d market \u2014 the one that only works if \u201cObsession\u201d doesn\u2019t count.<\/p>\n

All of this second-guesses the Justice Department\u2019s Antitrust Division, which\u00a0vetted<\/a>\u00a0the deal for eight months and 2 million documents before closing its file in June with no conditions \u2014 and a finding that it is likely to increase competition. The 12 attorneys general, all Democrats, sued anyway a month later.<\/p>\n

Their complaint describes theatrical as \u201ca big business, and it is\u00a0thriving<\/a>.\u201d Nobody in the movie business talks that way. Moviegoers bought some 770 million\u00a0tickets<\/a>\u00a0last year \u2014 half as many as at the 2002 peak, and more than a third fewer than in 2019 \u2014 with an average\u00a0admission<\/a>\u00a0north of $13 doing the work that attendance no longer does.<\/p>\n

The employment record is no healthier. Los Angeles County\u00a0shed<\/a>\u00a0some 42,000 motion-picture jobs from 2022 through 2024; on-location\u00a0shooting<\/a>\u00a0has fallen by more than 40% over the same stretch; production employment is scraping a 30-year low. All of it predates this merger. The status quo the states want preserved produced those numbers.<\/p>\n

Set against that record, the deal\u2019s\u00a0commitments<\/a>\u00a0read like the industry\u2019s standing wish list: both studios still making movies, at least 30 wide theatrical releases a year \u2014 15 apiece \u2014 and a guaranteed 45-day exclusive theatrical window. Since Skydance took control last August, Paramount\u2019s annual slate has\u00a0climbed<\/a>\u00a0from eight pictures to 15.<\/p>\n

Economists have run the numbers. Jeff Ferry of the California Policy Center\u00a0prices<\/a>\u00a0the commitments at about $1 billion in added production outlays each year \u2014 roughly 6,600 jobs on sets and 40,000 economywide. A University of Wisconsin-Whitewater\u00a0team<\/a>\u00a0puts the national effect near $20 billion annually and north of 90,000 jobs.<\/p>\n

The Teamsters\u00a0call<\/a>\u00a0the deal a \u201cdirect threat to film and television workers nationwide,\u201d and one producer\u2019s\u00a0prediction<\/a>\u00a0of 10,000 lost jobs is backed by no study or model. But neither a picket line nor a court order can make a shrinking company greenlight pictures. Warner Bros. Discovery\u2019s top line has contracted every year since 2023 \u2014\u00a0$41.3 billion<\/a>\u00a0then, $37.3 billion now \u2014 with a $9.1 billion\u00a0write-down<\/a>\u00a0along the way. Blocking the sale does not protect workers from that trajectory. It locks them into it.<\/p>\n

The deal now sits frozen pending a trial that could run into 2027. If the states win, the commitments die with it: no 30-film floor, no 45-day window, none of the jobs in those studies \u2014 all sacrificed to a \u201cblockbuster market\u201d that a $750,000 horror movie just crashed. Hollywood\u2019s problem is not that too few companies make movies. It is that too few movies get made. A town that runs on greenlights should think hard before it cheers for a red light.<\/p>\n

Ashley Baker is the executive director of the Committee for Justice. X:\u00a0@andashleysays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an Oakland courtroom earlier this month, lawyers battling over Paramount Skydance\u2019s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417102,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,964,975],"class_list":["post-417101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-california","tag-california","tag-california-headlines","tag-california-news","tag-commentary","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417101\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}