Paramount‘s chief legal officer said the company remains open to negotiating a resolution to the lawsuit threatening its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, even as the studio weighs leaving California over the fight.
Makan Delrahim made the comments at a Politico conference on Tuesday, addressing the state attorneys general lawsuit trying to block the Paramount Warner Bros. merger. California and 11 other states sued last month, arguing the deal would hurt competition in theatrical film distribution, blockbuster releases and basic cable licensing.
Inside the Paramount Warner Bros. merger fight over California
David Ellison, Paramount’s chief executive, told company executives he would begin the process of leaving California around Oct. 1 if Rob Bonta, the state’s attorney general, does not negotiate a settlement. Bonta, who leads the states’ case, called the relocation threat a form of “blackmail” earlier at the same conference.
Delrahim pushed back on that characterization. “I heard the attorney general say that this was some kind of blackmail attempt for the lawsuit. It is not,” he said, noting the deal has already cleared regulators in 67 countries, including the European Union, China, Canada and Australia.
Paramount faces a $7 million-per-day fee owed to Warner Bros. Discovery for every day the merger doesn’t close past Sept. 30. A federal judge set the trial for next March last week, pushing back the company’s plan to close the deal this summer.
Delrahim said Ellison remains committed to the state despite the fee pressure. “David Ellison was born here, lived here since I moved to this country … His intent is to be committed to be in California,” Delrahim said, adding that Ellison also has “a fiduciary duty to your shareholders” to weigh.
The fight over CNN’s future
Ellison has argued the states’ opposition is less about antitrust and more about what happens to CNN under Paramount ownership, and critics have warned he could push the network in a more Trump-friendly direction. In a New York Times op-ed, Ellison wrote that CNN and CBS News, which Paramount already owns, are “here to tell it straight down the middle.”
Bonta denies the lawsuit targets CNN specifically and says divesting the network alone would not resolve the states’ antitrust concerns. Delrahim said he takes Bonta “at his word” that the case isn’t about the news network, calling it an antitrust case focused on movie theaters and cable operators.
Delrahim argued the states have a weak case. He pointed to support for the merger from major theater chains and disputed the claim that combining Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery would harm cable competition. “There is no such thing as basic cable anymore,” he said, estimating the combined company’s streaming market share at “7% to 11%.”
Politico’s Alex Burns pressed Delrahim on whether Paramount would sell CNN to speed up the deal. Delrahim said “everything is on the table,” and pointed to his own background as an Iranian immigrant to explain his views on press freedom protections.
He also dismissed the prospect of a corruption probe if Democrats gain control of Congress after the midterms. “You can allege all you want,” he said. “There is no corruption here.”