Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

California and New York agree: This Paramount Skydance–Warner Bros. Discovery merger should not pass. After an uproar across Hollywood and a stamp of approval from the Department of Justice, California attorney general Rob Bonta, alongside several other state attorneys, filed suit this morning in Sacramento in an attempt to block the David Ellison–led company’s $110 billion acquisition of WBD. The suit calls this merger the “largest in Hollywood history” and says it “would extinguish competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. and inflict substantial harm on movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately audiences nationwide.”

Bonta has been threatening legal retaliation since June, hoping to gather as many states as possible to share in their opposition. As Alvaro Bedoya, a former commissioner of the FTC, told Vulture at the time, “The open question is not whether Bonta will sue. It’s how many of his colleagues will join him.” That contingent has grown to 12 with attorneys from New York, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, and the state of Washington delivering the suit with California. Together, they argue this merger will benefit no one other than the company’s corporate heads and will “likely result in higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film,” citing Disney and Fox’s 2017 merger, which was followed by layoffs and a decrease in the number of widely released films.

In the suit, at a press conference held in Los Angeles, and in a column at Variety, Bonta has continually pointed out that Paramount Skydance will own 30 percent of blockbuster release distribution and will control two of the five major film studios, one of the four major broadcast-television networks, three subscription services, 50 cable channels (CNN included), and three television studios. The overlap of job sectors between the two companies would lead to devastating layoffs and cuts to distribution, Bonta and his fellow attorneys general explain. New York mayor Zohran Mamdani threw his support behind the suit Monday as well: “This is not a merger that serves the public … New York’s workers helped build this industry. They should not be sacrificed for the sake of further corporate consolidation.”

What comes next is unclear. But the lawsuit will at the very least likely delay Paramount Skydance’s goal of closing this deal by the end of the month. Recently, another state attorney general suit temporarily blocked the merger of media groups Nexstar and Tegna. If Paramount Skydance doesn’t close this merger with Warner Bros. Discovery by September 30, the former company will be forced to pay a ticking fee to WBD shareholders that would equate to $650 million per quarter until the deal is closed. Time is money.

Sign up for the Vulture Daily

An entertainment newsletter for the pop-culture obsessed.

Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice

Related