Resistance to Paramount-Warner merger: twelve states and writers sue
Resistance is building against the planned roughly 110-billion-dollar takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance: twelve U.S. states and the screenwriters' union are suing. They warn of an unprecedented concentration of media power.
On the core the sources agree: a mega-deal of roughly 110 to 111 billion dollars would merge two Hollywood heavyweights, and lawsuits from twelve states and the writers' union are now being filed against it. The assessment unites the otherwise opposing papers unusually strongly: both the conservative Wall Street Journal and Le Figaro and the left-liberal Le Monde view the merger critically. Le Figaro, in an analysis, stresses the looming media concentration and the possible influence of Donald Trump on the emerging conglomerate. Le Monde quotes the writers' union saying the merger "threatens the economic and creative health" of the U.S. entertainment industry. AFP records the union's legal push. What remains contested is less whether the merger concentrates market power, which everyone sees, than whether antitrust authorities and courts can still stop it or will only attach conditions.