Paramount isn’t backing off its timeline. Despite a fresh lawsuit seeking to block its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, the company’s lead trial counsel, Jeffrey Kessler, told CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday that Paramount still wants the deal closed by the end of September. If it has to fight all the way to the Supreme Court to get there, it will.
The legal trouble kicked off Monday when a coalition of state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, sued to stop the merger on antitrust grounds. Hours later, the group went further, filing for a temporary restraining order to freeze the deal while the case plays out in court.
Kessler pushed back hard on the idea that this is even an antitrust issue. “The company believes strongly in this,” he said, framing the tie-up as “pro-competitive” rather than a threat to the market. He also said Paramount had floated a compromise: get everything resolved by early September through an orderly process, but the states turned it down, leaving the restraining order as the only path forward for now. If granted, it would pause the deal for 14 days, with room for a second one before things escalate to a preliminary injunction.
Timing matters here for a reason beyond optics. Paramount is also watching the calendar in Europe, where regulators set July 22 as the new deadline for approval. The company has already submitted concessions to the EU to ease things along, and Kessler said Paramount is hoping to have every regulatory box checked by then. The deal has already cleared the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, as well as several other global regulators.
There’s real money on the line if things drag. Paramount agreed to a “ticking fee” as part of the deal; if closing slips past September 30, it owes Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders roughly US$650 million per quarter until the deal actually closes.
Kessler leaned into the bigger picture to make his case, pointing out that traditional entertainment is struggling as viewers ditch cable bundles and streaming giants keep piling on the pressure. In his view, combining Paramount and Warner Bros. would create a company big enough to go head-to-head with Netflix, Disney, and Amazon Prime, a win, he argued, for theatres and Hollywood workers alike.
California’s Bonta sees it differently, warning the merger could mean “higher prices, lower quality, and less content” for anyone watching TV or going to the movies. To ease those fears, Paramount CEO David Ellison has promised the combined studios will release 30 films a year, and Kessler says Paramount is willing to put that commitment in writing if the states want it.
