Paramount closes $111B Warner Bros. Discovery merger under the Skydance name

Deal closes after Supreme Court rebuff

Paramount Skydance has completed its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, according to Ars Technica, creating a single company that spans two of Hollywood's largest film studios, two major streaming services, a broadcast network and a global news channel. The transaction closed shortly after Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan rejected a last-ditch attempt to block it.

The combined company takes the Skydance name

The merged entity will operate as Skydance, a name taken from the studio that Paramount acquired in a separate deal last year. In a press release announcing the completion, the company said the combination brings together its film studios, the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming platforms, CBS, CNN, and live sports portfolios including CBS Sports and TNT Sports, along with what it described as a deep programming library and a broad collection of brands and franchises.

An antitrust lawsuit slowed but did not stop the merger

The deal had been delayed by a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other states. In July, US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the Northern District of California ruled that the combination would likely substantially reduce competition and violate antitrust law, an outcome that put the entire transaction at risk.

Rather than taking the case to trial, California settled the lawsuit last month, and the other states that had joined the suit accepted the compromise. A coalition of free speech and media advocacy groups pressed the judge to reject the settlement, arguing that it would give residents of the suing states almost nothing of value.

Martínez-Olguín approved the settlement on September 30. She described it as a reasonable resolution of the factual and legal disputes in the case, while acknowledging that settlements typically fall short of fully remedying an alleged violation and do not necessarily resolve every underlying question. A consent decree, she wrote, is a compromise that spares both sides the risk, time and expense of litigating through trial, even if it leaves some dissatisfaction among the parties and the public. Objections grounded in wishes that the decree had gone further, she concluded, do not amount to the legal violations a court would need in order to reject a negotiated resolution.

What the settlement requires

The consent decree addresses the two central complaints in the states' lawsuit. On film distribution, it sets minimum thresholds for investing in and releasing domestic films. On basic cable, it requires that distribution negotiations for the two companies' basic cable holdings continue to be conducted separately, rather than as a single combined bloc.

Why it matters

The closing concentrates a large share of American film production, streaming and live sports rights under one roof. A federal judge had already concluded that the combination would likely harm competition, yet the remedies that ultimately allowed it are relatively narrow: spending and release floors for domestic films, and a separation requirement for basic cable negotiations. Advocacy groups argued those terms deliver little to the public, and the judge herself framed the settlement as a compromise rather than a full fix.

For the streaming market, Paramount+ and HBO Max now answer to the same owner at a moment when scale increasingly determines which services can afford premium programming and sports rights. The outcome also demonstrates how far a mega-merger can travel through the courts on the strength of a consent decree, a precedent other media companies weighing consolidation are likely to study closely.