Paramount’s Acquisition of Warner Bros. Wouldn’t Be the End of Hollywood or Press Freedom

While there are legitimate antitrust concerns regarding the merger, doomsday predictions are unwarranted.

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Paramount Skydance's planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is being protested by much of Hollywood.

As of Tuesday afternoon, over 2,000 film and television professionals—including Mark Ruffalo, J.J. Abrams, Denis Villeneuve, and Ben Stiller—had signed an open letter opposing Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. The letter warns that the deal would reduce competition in the industry and accelerate consolidation, which the signatories say is responsible for "the disappearance of the mid-budget film, the erosion of independent distribution, [and] the collapse of the international sales market."

In December, Warner Bros. initially accepted Netflix's $83 billion bid for Warner Bros. studio, HBO, and HBO Max. In an attempt to dissuade Warner Bros. from accepting Netflix's offer, Paramount warned that the deal would not survive federal antitrust scrutiny and argued that their merger was more likely to be approved. (President Donald Trump publicly stated he would be involved in antitrust considerations regarding Netflix's planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Not so coincidentally, Trump is close with Larry Ellison, who owns nearly half of Paramount and is the father of its CEO.)

In February, Warner Bros. accepted Paramount's counteroffer of around $110 billion for the whole company, whose cable channels include CNN. Now, Paramount is the one facing antitrust scrutiny from state regulators.

Only days before Warner Bros. accepted Paramount's offer, California Attorney General Rob Bonta issued a press release stating that "the proposed Warner Brothers transactions must receive a full and robust review, and California is taking a very close look." Bonta is coordinating his antitrust investigation with New York Attorney General Letitia James, reports Politico.

Matt Stoller, research director of the American Economic Liberties Project, a nonprofit that promotes antitrust enforcement, says the merger must be blocked "if we want to continue to even have a TV or film industry." Stoller tells Reason that Hollywood is at risk of being hollowed out like Detroit, thanks to a combination of domestic consolidation and foreign subsidies.

While concerns about consolidation "cannot easily be dismissed," says Eric Fruits, director of economic research at the International Center for Law & Economics, "the analysis isn't that simple."

Fruits says the Paramount–Warner Bros. "merger would reduce the number of major studios and could increase bargaining power over talent and distributors," and increase the likelihood of job losses. At the same time, Warner Bros. is a "financially constrained firm operating in a rapidly changing market" and "a combined Paramount-[Warner Bros.] could plausibly become a stronger competitor to Netflix, Amazon, and Disney+."

Paramount and Warner Bros. have around 80 million and 120 million direct-to-consumer streaming subscribers, respectively. The other three major streaming services are larger: Disney+ at 132 million, Amazon Prime at 250 million, and Netflix with over 325 million subscribers. By consolidating their intellectual property, Paramount–Warner Bros. would present a more viable alternative to the three big streaming platforms, jointly attracting more subscribers than either Paramount or Warner Bros. does independently, and inducing price competition between itself, Disney+, Amazon Prime, and Netflix.

Instead of promoting competition between large producer-distributors, Stoller says regulators should break them up: "What we should do is separate out the distribution from the production." But entertainment companies have been vertically integrating for more than 30 years, per the American Economic Liberties Project. Barring substantive lawmaking or rulemaking, this trend will not be reversed. Increasing competition in the current market structure is the best-case scenario, and that's what Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. would do.

But it's not just the health of the industry that is concerning advocates. The merger would also "gravely threaten the freedom of the press by putting CNN and CBS News under the control of Donald Trump's allies," says Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank. This statement fails to consider that the most popular evening news programs, ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas, are both produced by left-leaning outlets.

Moreover, "Americans have more access to news than ever before from broadcast, cable, digital outlets, and independent creators," says Fruits. An August 2025 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found that 56 percent of American adults often get their news from digital devices, while only 32 percent do so from TV.

Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. would likely disrupt the entertainment industry labor market, but it is likely to benefit American consumers.