Attorney General Rayfield: Paramount Skydance Agrees to Delay Warner Bros. Discovery Merger Pending Trial

Attorney General Dan Rayfield today announced Paramount-Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery have agreed to hold off on combining their operations until the courts have ruled on the two lawsuits challenging the merger.

"This is a win for consumers, workers, and fair competition," said Attorney General Rayfield. "Oregonians are the ones who pay the price when these media mergers go unchecked - through higher costs, fewer choices, and less competition. That's exactly what these protections are designed to prevent while our case moves forward."

A judge previously issued a temporary restraining order blocking the merger while a coalition of states, including Oregon, and the Writers Guild of America pursue separate lawsuits against the deal. Benefitting American consumers and state economies, both sides have agreed and the court has signed a longer-lasting restraint that will stay in place for both cases until the lawsuits are resolved on their merits, or until June 1, 2027 - whichever comes first. If the cases are still ongoing at that point, the states and the Writers Guild can ask the court to extend the protections further.

Background

Currently, Paramount and Warner Bros. compete to create and distribute film and television content to American viewers. To promote their films, they negotiate with thousands of movie theaters across the country and bargain with those theaters to secure the most coveted screens and calendar slots. Movie theaters in Oregon and across the country benefit from competition between Paramount and Warner Bros. to incentivize creativity and secure competitive prices and terms for themselves and for audiences.

Paramount and Warner Bros. also compete to market their basic cable channels. To acquire the rights to distribute that content to subscribers, distributors negotiate with Paramount, Warner Bros., and other cable channel owners. This competition is critical for distributors and for viewers. For example, if Paramount insists on bad financial terms, a distributor can gain leverage by turning to Warner Bros. - and vice versa. Distributors rely on this competition to secure low prices for themselves and for their subscribers, and to encourage programmers to invest in new and exciting content for television.

Paramount's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. would end this competition, threatening Oregonians with higher prices, the decline of theatrical exhibition of films, and a reduction in the variety, quality, and amount of content distributed.