Batgirl Is Now Evidence In Federal Court Against The Paramount-Warner Merger

UPDATE 3: The brief’s “unenforceable” attack just took a direct hit. Per Bloomberg, Paramount is putting the 30-film pledge into signed contracts with AMC and Regal, making it something the two biggest theater chains can sue over.

UPDATE 2: Gardner called it. The freeze was granted, and the fight got even longer than he predicted: Paramount has agreed not to close until a trial verdict, as late as June 2027.

UPDATE: The push to freeze the deal has hit its first wall, with the judge’s first ruling in the injunction fight denying the Paramount+ subscribers’ request on standing grounds.

Batgirl is back. Not on a screen, but in federal court.

The 12 states suing to block Paramount from buying Warner Bros. have filed an emergency brief asking a judge to freeze the deal before it closes.

According to Puck legal expert Eriq Gardner, who read the filing, the states point directly to the DC movie Warner Bros. Discovery killed in 2022 as evidence of what can happen after a massive media merger.

Batgirl had finished filming. Leslie Grace was in the suit, Michael Keaton was back as Batman, and roughly $90 million had already been spent.

Then, in August 2022, four months after the WarnerMedia–Discovery merger closed, the new company buried the movie for a tax write-off.

It was not delayed. It was not dumped onto streaming. It was erased, and the public has never seen it.

Peter Safran later defended the decision by calling the movie “not releasable.” But J.K. Simmons, who played Commissioner Gordon, has since blown a hole in that story, saying the test screening “wasn’t like it was a bad score.”

Whatever the real reason, Warner Bros. decided a finished $90 million DC movie was worth more buried than released.

The states’ argument is simple: this is what mega-mergers can do to movies.

States Use Batgirl As A Merger Warning

The brief follows the money.

The 2022 merger loaded Warner Bros. Discovery with debt. Paying it down brought layoffs, write-downs, canceled projects, and a finished superhero movie that became worth more as a tax deduction than as an actual release.

The Paramount deal would create a combined company carrying a projected $78 billion debt load.

The states say the same pressure would return on an even bigger scale.

That is why the brief dismisses David Ellison’s promise to release 30 movies a year in theaters as “unenforceable and implausible.”

(Update: Paramount heard that word. The 30-movie pledge is now going into contracts with the theater chains themselves. Break the promise, and AMC and Regal can sue.)

It is the same argument California Attorney General Rob Bonta made during his podcast grilling this week: David Zaslav promised 20 theatrical movies in 2024 and released nine. Why should anyone believe the next promise of 30?

The Batgirl Argument Cuts Both Ways

However, there is one major problem with using Batgirl as the warning.

Paramount did not kill the movie.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s current management did, operating under the same corporate structure the states are now trying to preserve by blocking the sale.

Per my insiders, that structure has no future.

As we exclusively reported, if the Paramount deal dies, Warner Bros. gets sold off in pieces and ceases to exist, or survives only as a smaller label like MGM at Amazon.

So the states are using Batgirl to protect Warner Bros. from Paramount while the Warner Bros. they would preserve may be headed for something even worse.

Per my insiders, the no-deal outcome is Batgirl on a company-wide scale.

Paramount’s official position is the exact opposite: the merger would produce more movies, not fewer.

One side says the deal will destroy Warner Bros. The other says blocking it will.

A federal judge now gets to decide which warning is more credible.

The First Courtroom Showdowns Are Here

On Thursday, Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, who now controls every case challenging the deal, will hear the Paramount+ subscriber lawsuit’s request to freeze the merger in Oakland.

It will be the first time any of these legal theories are tested out loud in a courtroom.

Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific, the states get their turn with the emergency freeze request that cites Batgirl.

Gardner predicts the judge will grant the freeze, setting up the real showdown in August or September.

That would push the fight directly toward October 1, when Paramount’s penalty clock begins running at roughly $650 million per quarter.

Every DC domino my insiders have described waits on the outcome: James Gunn, Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, and the future Batman plans.

Four years ago, Warner Bros. Discovery deleted Batgirl to save money on its taxes.

Now Batgirl could help decide who owns Batman.