Judge Martínez-Olguín requests parties submit replies to Sen. Booker's request for an independent public-interest review The judge overseeing the antitrust case filed by 12 state attorneys general seeking to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger questioned the parties about their settlement at a hearing Thursday.
District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín has not yet ruled on whether to approve the proposed settlement, and set the virtual hearing to cover “outstanding questions” about it. She did not indicate when she might issue a ruling, saying that it would be coming in “due course.” One key bit of “homework” the judge assigned: Martínez-Olguín asked the parties to submit replies to a letter submitted to the court by Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), by noon PT Monday, Sept. 28.
On Thursday, Booker sent a letter to the court seeking a ruling to halt to the Paramount-WBD merger, saying he was writing “to urge the Court to subject the proposed consent decree to an independent public-interest review before entering it.” Unlike a federal antitrust consent judgment, the Paramount-state AGs settlement “has reached the Court without a competitive impact statement, without a public comment period, and without any formal opportunity for theaters, distributors, workers, or consumers to be heard,” Booker wrote. Paramount Skydance, in a brief filed with the court earlier Thursday, said it opposed Booker’s “improper pseudo-amicus submission.” In her prefatory remarks, Martínez-Olguín said, “The court isn’t a rubber stamp of your agreement… I have some questions.” The judge said she wanted to “shore up the idea that this is not something that was the result of collusion, but instead was more of an arm’s length process.” Paula Blizzard, senior assistant attorney general for the antitrust section of the California Attorney General’s Office, averred that it was an “arm’s length process,” and an attorney for Paramount concurred. Asked by the judge how the settlement addresses the state AGs’ concerns over competition, as outlined in its antitrust case, Blizzard said the reasoning was that the states were wary about permanently blocking the Paramount-WBD deal.
And she said Warner Bros. Discovery, if it were denied the deal to merge with Paramount, would likely seek another M&A partner. They reflect the country’s very broad political and philosophical divides, concerns about the state of the news media, people’s relationship to big companies and consolidation and corporate power, and we hear those voices, we listen to those voices, we respect those voices.
But at the end of the day, this is an antitrust case, and it is focused on the antitrust law.” Blizzard, later in her comments to the judge, said that while the State of California is trying to protect “businesses and competition,” she said “there are some voices that carry a little less weight, and those are the ones that are threatening and are blackmailing us to say that they will pull out of California. And the reason that that voice has very little weight is that it doesn’t affect the antitrust case. This is an antitrust case.” That’s a reference to Paramount CEO David Ellison telling his senior leadership team that the company would seek to relocate elsewhere if the Warner Bros. merger was blocked, which leaked to the press.
Josh Holian of Latham & Watkins, representing Paramount, commented in response to that: “I don’t agree that anybody was blackmailing anybody.” He said “Paramount has to make business decisions about where it’s going to run its operations, but it’s business decisions. It’s not a threat.” Martínez-Olguín asked about the condition that Paramount-WBD would be required to divest its ownership stake in Miramax Studios if the company doesn’t meet the movie-output minimum requirements. Holian, Paramount’s attorney, said that of the top 20 films at the domestic box office right now for 2026, Paramount and Warner Bros. represent three of those pictures, and noted that one of those is a Miramax movie: “Scary Movie 6.” Holman said, “It’s a Miramax property that is something that would be part of that divestiture package.
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