Paramount Settles With State AGs and the WGA, Clearing the Last Hurdle

Paramount Skydance settled lawsuits from a coalition of 12 state attorneys general and from the Writers Guild of America on Monday, clearing the last major obstacle to its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Deadline and Bloomberg reported. The states, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, had sued in July to block the deal on antitrust grounds, and a judge's temporary restraining order had already forced Paramount to delay closing past its original September 30 target. Under the settlement, Paramount commits to releasing at least 30 films a year for its first two years and 32 in each of the following three, backed by a $30 million per-film penalty if it falls short, with 90 percent of any penalty going to workers. The company also agreed to a $1.5 billion investment in domestic film production, a $47.5 million workforce development fund, and continued honoring of existing union contracts, while a Wall Street Journal report said Paramount will not be required to sell any cable networks. The WGA said in a statement it "could not be successful in blocking the merger" but that pursuing the case alone through trial, without the states' backing, would have cost millions of dollars the guild did not think were justified. Paramount CEO David Ellison called the settlement "complete clearance for this merger."