Trump gives the green light to Paramount’s Warner deal
Eight months of negotiations, billions at stake and a textbook bidding war: Paramount has now cleared the biggest hurdle. But the Warner saga is not over yet.
Who will end up with Warner Bros. Discovery? The saga has had more twists and turns since October 2025 than Odysseus’ journey home: a bidding war, political interference, a shareholder vote, a lawsuit and even a rare defeat for Netflix.
Now there is another chapter: the US Department of Justice has approved the planned takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance approved without conditions. The takeover would harm neither competition in the streaming business nor film production or US consumers. The authorities reached this conclusion following months of antitrust scrutiny.
But the game isn’t over yet.
What’s happened so far – the very short version
For anyone who’s lost track: Warner Bros. Discovery was put up for sale from October 2025. Netflix initially secured the deal and was prepared to pay $82.7 billion for the film studio, HBO and the streaming business.
Paramount countered several times, including with a hostile counter-offer and consistently bid for the entire group, including linear TV channels such as CNN. After months of wrangling, a lawsuit and nine (!) offers, the Warner board ultimately decided in favour of Paramount. The deal: $31 per share, paid entirely in cash, with a total value of around $111 billion.
Netflix subsequently withdrew and stated that the deal had been «nice to have», but not a «must have». Sounds like the excuses of a sore loser. Had the deal gone through, Netflix would not simply have grown – the company would have become arguably the most powerful content owner in modern entertainment. Netflix, HBO, Warner Bros., DC «Harry Potter» and «Lord of the Rings» all under one roof. That’s no small matter.
Now that Warner shareholders have approved the Paramount deal at the end of April, all that’s missing is the green light from the competition authorities in all key markets.
No conditions. Surprising? Not really.
So now the Trump administration has given the green light, and without any conditions at that. Sounds like a big moment – and formally, it is. The authorities did not, for instance, require Paramount to divest certain channels or release licences to prevent it from becoming a new monopoly in the entertainment industry. The deal was simply waved through.
It is not a shock, however. Because compared to the alternative option – namely the Netflix deal – a Paramount-Warner group has significantly less antitrust impact. Netflix would have become the world’s largest streaming ecosystem and thus the undisputed content superpower – a scenario that had caused regulatory authorities worldwide considerably more headaches.
Paramount, on the other hand, is rooted in traditional Hollywood studio operations, not in the streaming monopoly business. From an antitrust perspective, the takeover looks like «Old Hollywood meets Old Hollywood», and that is less threatening than «a streaming giant swallowing everything».
The political explosiveness of this deal
And then there is CNN. The Trump-critical news channel is part of Warner’s linear TV business and ends up at Paramount under the umbrella of the Ellison family, whose patriarch Larry Ellison is considered a close confidant of US President Trump. Critics fear that CNN’s editorial independence could now come under pressure.
In fact, Trump himself publicly announced in December that he intended to intervene in the regulatory review – a highly unusual move in US history that underlines the political dimension of this deal. The fact that his administration has now given the takeover the green light is unlikely to reassure everyone in this situation.
The deal is scheduled to be finalised in the third quarter of 2026. Whether that happens now depends primarily on California and Europe. For Warner, HBO, DC and «Harry Potter» the clock is ticking – literally, because from 1 October, Paramount will pay a late payment penalty of $0.25 per share per quarter. That amounts to around $650 million every three months.
Motivation enough to act quickly.
Nevertheless: it is not (quite) over yet
Approval from Trump’s Department of Justice was the most significant hurdle, but not the last. Several US states are still considering legal action. California in particular is seen as a potential problem area: the state could file a lawsuit and delay the deal by up to six to eight months – an injunction would be enough to scupper the planned completion in the third quarter of 2026.
At the same time, the review by European competition authorities is still ongoing. Germany and Slovenia have already approved the deal; the European Commission has the documents but a decision is still pending. However, no major hurdles are expected here either. After all, Paramount has significantly less market power in Europe compared to a Netflix-Warner giant.
I write about technology as if it were cinema, and about films as if they were real life. Between bits and blockbusters, I’m after stories that move people, not just generate clicks. And yes – sometimes I listen to film scores louder than I probably should.
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