California's attorney general is still investigating, and more than 1,400 Hollywood creators have asked the government to block a deal that would put CNN, HBO, CBS, and Paramount+ under one roof.
The combined Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery would control CNN, HBO, Warner Bros film and television, Paramount's broadcast network, and a stack of cable channels under a single corporate roof, if the $111 billion deal closes. The Justice Department said on Friday that the merger is "not likely to result in harm to competition or American consumers" after what it called a "rigorous" review, according to BBC News. The decision cleared the largest federal antitrust hurdle. It did not end the fight.
The map of what one company would own matters because the regulator is now betting that bigger media owners produce more competition, not less. Paramount Skydance chief executive David Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison is a major donor to President Donald Trump, would absorb Warner Bros Discovery's cable networks, the Warner Bros film and TV studios, the HBO streaming service, and CNN. Paramount's own assets, including CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the Paramount+ streaming service, would sit alongside them. Together the merged company would be a single conglomerate spanning broadcast television, premium cable, theatrical film, news, and two competing streaming services.
That concentration is the reason California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office confirmed that its review "remains under investigation," per BBC News. State attorneys general can sue to block mergers under federal antitrust law, and California has been the most active state on media consolidation in recent years. A formal California challenge would force the merged company to litigate the deal in court rather than simply close it, and it would reopen the substantive question of whether one company should control so many of the channels Americans watch and read.
The political backdrop is real but secondary. Paramount Skydance is led by David Ellison, whose father Larry Ellison has been a major Trump donor, and the merger talks sat inside a year of public pressure from the administration on media companies. That context is part of the climate surrounding the deal, not a finding about its merits. The legal question in California will turn on competition, consumer harm, and labor, not on donor networks.
The labor and creator opposition is already in the record. More than 1,400 Hollywood actors, directors, and filmmakers signed an April open letter warning that the merger would mean fewer opportunities for creators, fewer production jobs, higher costs, and less choice for audiences. The letter landed before the Justice Department decision, and it tracks with what Skydance itself did during its 2025 merger with Paramount: roughly 10% of its workforce was cut during that integration, a fact critics of the Warner Bros deal are now pointing to as evidence of what to expect.
For now, the deal is approved at the federal level and under review at the state level in California. The merged company can prepare to integrate, or it can wait to see whether Bonta's office files a lawsuit that turns the regulatory green light into a courtroom fight. Either way, the map of who owns what in American media is about to get simpler, and the question of whether that is good for viewers, workers, or creators is now a question for Sacramento as much as Washington.