Mammoth deal has raised questions about corporate consolidation and editorial independence in media.
Published On 30 Sep 2026
A United States judge has entered an order giving the green light for the media giant Paramount to complete its $110bn acquisition of entertainment company Warner Bros., despite fears about the long-term impacts of media consolidation.
On Wednesday, US District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin approved a settlement between Paramount, Warner Bros, and a group of 12 states that had sued to block the merger.
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In her ruling, Martinez-Olguin described the proposed deal as a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms”.
Analysts have long raised concerns about the acquisition, one of the largest media mergers in history.
The coalition of states that sued to block the deal, led by California, had argued that combining Paramount with Warner Bros would effectively stifle media competition. They estimated that nearly one-third of all theatrical releases and basic cable programming would be consolidated under the merger.
But the states abandoned their lawsuit in favour of a settlement on September 21.
The five-year agreement requires Paramount to abide by theatrical film release quotas, committing to 30 releases per year in the US.
It also mandates that the combined company must keep negotiations with cable providers for Warner-owned channels separate from its deals for Paramount-owned channels.
The settlement approved on Wednesday also includes the creation of a five-member panel meant to safeguard the editorial independence of CNN and CBS, two major news networks.
But sceptics have pointed out that the merger puts a large swath of US media under the control of David Ellison, who leads Paramount.
Under Wednesday’s agreement, Ellison is in charge of appointments to the board that would oversee news independence.
The Paramount CEO is the son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a strong backer of pro-Israel causes who has close ties to the administration of President Donald Trump.
The founder of the film production company Skydance, David Ellison acquired Paramount last year as part of another controversial merger.
The 2025 Paramount-Skydance deal brought CBS under Ellison’s control. Ahead of the merger, sceptics questioned the abrupt cancellation of the CBS comedy show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, which had been critical of Trump.
Ellison later installed Bari Weiss, a pro-Israel media figure, as the head of CBS News in a move that also raised questions about diminished independence within major journalism outlets.
Some critics depicted Wednesday’s settlement as a further capitulation to powerful corporate interests.
“Allowing one Trump-aligned, foreign-owned conglomerate to dominate American news and entertainment is a disastrous outcome,” Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said in the wake of the settlement’s announcement.
But public officials like California Governor Gavin Newsom had called on his state’s Attorney General Rob Bonta to scrap the 12-state effort to block the deal and to pursue a settlement instead.
Paramount emerged victorious from a bidding war with the streaming giant Netflix in February to win control of Warner Bros’s holdings.
That includes a series of media and entertainment services, including the film studio Warner Bros Pictures, CNN and HBO Max. The Trump administration approved the deal without alterations in June.
