Paramount-WBD’s Corporate Blood Sport About to Start: 5 Burning Qs

The biggest media merger in Hollywood history is now days from becoming reality. And for the people who actually make television, the hard part is just beginning.

David Ellison and 12 state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, on Monday reached a settlement in the antitrust lawsuit that was the last remaining obstacle to Paramount’s $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. In a memo to employees that I reviewed, WBD CEO David Zaslav wrote that he expects the Paramount Skydance deal to close “no later than early October.”

The settlement, which did not include any of Bonta’s so-called “structural remedies,” landed with a thud in Hollywood. “Gavin Newsom hands huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies,” outspoken Ellison critic Mark Ruffalo wrote. The Block the Merger Coalition said it was “disappointed and angry that the interests of average Americans have been trampled to benefit oligarch billionaires.” The Writers Guild of America, which settled its own lawsuit blocking the merger Monday, said it “​​continue[s] to believe the merger will cause damage to writers and the industry at large” but, as a nonprofit, could not afford to forge ahead with its suit on its own. As for the concessions the AGs did extract from Ellison, give a listen to Richard Rushfield and antitrust expert Matt Stoller’s conversation from earlier today to understand just how toothless they may be.

With seemingly only days remaining before the merger is official, here’s my field guide to the corporate blood sport that’s about to begin — five questions that will determine what the new company’s TV business actually looks like:

1. How bad will the bloodletting be?
2. Who wins the Bloys-Holland showdown?
3. Can they afford to kill cable?
4. Will they stop selling to Netflix?
5. Will there be a showrunner exodus?

A field guide to the corporate blood sport that’s about to begin: