WGA Settles Antitrust Lawsuit With Paramount Over Warner Bros. Discovery Merger

The Writers Guild of America East and Writers Guild of America West have settled their lawsuit to block the proposed merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery per a statement released by the organization Monday.

The settlement comes following the news that Paramount has reached a deal with 12 state attorneys general, removing a major obstacle to closing its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.

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Read the WGA’s full statement here:

“We continue to believe the merger will cause damage to writers and the industry at large. Now that the Attorneys General have settled with Paramount, however, as a nonprofit, the WGA must contend with the reality of forging ahead alone, with no backing from government enforcers, with a complex antitrust lawsuit that would cost millions of dollars to pursue through trial. Consequently, we have also settled our lawsuit with an agreement from Paramount to prohibit writer layoffs at CBS News Broadcast for 5 years, and to pay $17.5 million to our health fund along with our attorneys’ fees in the litigation.

Though we were not successful in blocking the merger, our advocacy brought more attention to the harms that this merger—and others like it—will cause. We will continue to fight the harms of industry consolidation.

As the number of outlets to sell our work to and the corresponding diversity of programming shrinks, we need industry-wide structural separation between streamers and studios in order to promote competition in programming, like the Financial Interest and Syndication Rules once required in broadcast television. We will continue to fight for these goals.”

More to come…