A federal judge on Wednesday approved Paramount’s settlement with 12 states, clearing the last major roadblock so the company can close its mega merger with Warner Bros. Discovery as soon as next week.
U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín granted the proposed consent decree after finding it a fair, reasonable, and good-faith approach to the competitive harms the states had claimed. The order came out of Chicago and followed months of legal pressure led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general.
Breitbart News reported that Paramount had called the antitrust challenge its final hurdle. Shortly after the ruling, the company announced Mattel chief executive Ynon Kreiz will join on Oct. 5 as co-CEO alongside David Ellison. The combined firm aims to finish the acquisition in early October.
The states sued in July with the initial goal of blocking the deal altogether. They alleged the combination of two of Hollywood’s last five legacy studios would extinguish competition and leave consumers with fewer choices. Assets under one roof would include HBO Max, the “Harry Potter” library, cable networks such as CNN, CBS, and Paramount+.
Last week the states reversed course and agreed to settle through a package of Paramount commitments. Bonta announced that deal on Sept. 21. The Writers Guild of America, which had filed its own suit shortly after the states, also settled and dropped its fight after concluding it could not continue alone.
The consent decree binds the combined company to concrete production and oversight pledges rather than structural breakups. Paramount committed to increase film production in the United States over the next five years and to put millions of dollars into a fund for workers displaced by the merger.
Reuters reported additional specifics from the Sept. 21 agreement: the company must release at least 30 films a year in U.S. theaters for five years, spend an extra $300 million yearly on U.S. production, negotiate basic cable deals separately, and create a board of journalists to oversee CBS News and CNN. The companies now expect the deal to close on October 6, with Kreiz running day-to-day operations and integration.
Just The News noted the five-year production spending totals an additional $1.5 billion and confirmed the board charged with protecting editorial independence at the two news networks. These monitoring-style conditions resemble other recent official approvals that impose ongoing restrictions rather than outright bans, much like new legal regimes that layer compliance duties after clearance.
A California Department of Justice spokesperson said the settlement “resolves our antitrust concerns…, protects competition and consumer choice, and centers the needs, concerns, and futures of California workers.” When Bonta first announced the deal he framed it as “protecting people’s careers, the lives they’ve built here in California, the livelihoods their families rely on.”
He was careful to add that the settlement was not a vote of support for the merger itself.
Before signing off, Martínez-Olguín held a hearing and made clear the court is not merely a “rubber stamp.” She still had questions. She also granted outside critics a brief window to file amicus briefs and instructed Paramount and the settling states to respond to a letter from Democratic Sen. Cory Booker that had called for a more thorough review.
The League of United Latin American Citizens and the Block The Merger coalition used that window. On Wednesday the coalition called the settlement a “toothless” deal.
Block The Merger stated: “Allowing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger to move forward with no meaningful structural remedies will cost jobs, mute creativity, weaken independent journalism, and damage our First Amendment rights.”
The same statement added that “if there is one discernible benefit to the approval of this corporate takeover, it’s that people are now wide awake and paying attention, and their anger is not going to fade away.”
The judge was unmoved by demands for stronger medicine. She wrote that objectors’ hopes for the decree to reach farther do not rise to the level of legal violations upon which the court can reject the parties’ negotiated resolution. Just The News reported her further finding that the deal “represents a reasonable factual and legal resolution of the dispute” and “reflects a procedurally sound resolution.”
Washington Examiner coverage underscored the same language and noted that Martínez-Olguín, appointed by former President Joe Biden, determined the proposed settlement reflects a procedurally sound resolution of the legal dispute. Federal judges have repeatedly faced high-stakes corporate and government fights in recent months, including decisions that reject bids to halt contested official actions.
The timeline is short and revealing. Democratic attorneys general opened with a full block demand in July. By mid-September they had traded that demand for production quotas, a worker fund, and an editorial board. The Writers Guild followed the same path. A single Wednesday order then unlocked an $81 billion transaction that Paramount intends to finish within days.
Earlier court intervention had already slowed the path once, when a federal judge extended a restraining order and stalled the same Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery merger. That pause ended with this settlement approval.
Paramount wasted little time after the ruling. The afternoon announcement of Kreiz, currently chief executive at the toy giant Mattel, signals the company is ready to integrate and operate. Ellison and Kreiz will share the co-CEO role at the combined entity.
Large platform and media fights often end in negotiated monitoring rather than outright bans, as seen when high-profile legal resolutions impose external oversight after months of pressure. The pattern repeats here: Democratic state prosecutors forced process, extracted pledges, then stepped aside.
The states originally cast the merger as an existential threat to competition and consumer choice. Their own settlement now treats it as a manageable business combination that can be watched through film-release floors, spending floors, and a journalists’ board. Critics on the left still call the terms weak. The judge called them lawful.
Nothing in the record required the court to invent tougher remedies the parties themselves never negotiated. Martínez-Olguín said as much. Hopes for more do not equal legal violations.
Corporate disputes of this scale routinely land in federal court with claims of secrecy or unfair advantage, echoing other sweeping federal lawsuits over contested business conduct. In this case the path ran from block-the-deal rhetoric to a monitored close.
Taxpayers and lawful businesses are left with the practical result: two major studios will operate under one roof, production commitments will be tracked, and news divisions at CNN and CBS will answer to an added board. The Democratic attorneys general who started the fight accepted that outcome. The court refused to reopen it.
Free enterprise just moved forward while the political theater closed.
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