Paramount completes $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger, forming Skydance

Paramount Skydance completed its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery on 6 October, according to a Skydance press release. The post-merger company is called Skydance, taking the name of a firm Paramount bought in a separate deal last year, Ars Technica reported. The new company combines the Paramount+ and HBO Max streaming services, CBS, CNN, "and a portfolio of live sports including CBS Sports and TNT Sports, as well as a deep programming library and expansive collection of brands and franchises," Skydance said in the release.

Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan denied an emergency application to block the deal on 5 October without comment, according to Ars Technica. The merger was delayed by a lawsuit filed by California and 11 other states. In July, US District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in the Northern District of California ruled that the combination would likely reduce competition substantially and violate antitrust laws, Ars Technica reported.

California settled the lawsuit last month, and the other states involved went along with the compromise, Ars Technica reported. Martínez-Olguín approved the settlement on 30 September, writing that it "represents a reasonable factual and legal resolution of the dispute" and that a typical settlement "does not fully remediate an alleged violation or even necessarily resolve the ultimate factual and legal issues of a case." A coalition of free speech and media advocacy groups urged the judge to reject the settlement, saying it would give residents of the states that sued Paramount "virtually nothing."

The settlement requires Skydance to set up an "Editorial Independence Board" for CBS News and CNN, with members chosen by Skydance who report to the company's board of directors, according to Ars Technica. Ars Technica reported that the two news platforms will operate independently. CNN CEO Mark Thompson and CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss will retain their roles in the merged firm. The judge wrote that the settlement addresses complaints about film distribution "by requiring certain minimum thresholds of investment and release of domestic films," and complaints about licensing of basic cable channels with "requirements for continued, separate negotiations of distribution for the two entities' basic cable holdings."

Skydance said all of the direct-to-consumer streaming services it owns, including Discovery+, "will unify into a single service over time." On 1 October, The Hollywood Reporter published statements that Casey Bloys, HBO Max's content chief, who is expected to lead Skydance's combined streaming efforts, made at Bloomberg's 2026 Screentime event. Bloys said he did not want to comment on what would happen but pointed to the HBO Max-Disney bundle, which he said had been very successful, adding that a similar arrangement "would make a lot of sense." Skydance also now owns the rival children's channels Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon but has not said whether it will combine them into a single network, Ars Technica reported.

A separate lawsuit filed by five consumers who purchase streaming service subscriptions or other video products also failed, according to Ars Technica. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit rejected the plaintiffs' request for review, and Kagan denied their emergency application. Ars Technica reported that Paramount CEO David Ellison told Trump administration officials he would make big changes at CNN, which Trump had frequently criticized.