UPDATE: The states got what the subscribers couldn’t. The judge paused the deal days later, and Paramount has since agreed to a freeze until a trial verdict, as late as June 2027.
The first attempt to freeze the $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. deal is dead.
Judge Araceli MartĂnez-OlguĂn officially denied the Paramount+ subscribers’ request for an injunction Thursday, per Puck legal reporter Eriq Gardner.
It’s the first ruling in any of the four lawsuits trying to stop the merger, and it went Paramount’s way.
What Happened
The judge, who now has every case against this deal, heard the subscribers’ arguments Thursday in Oakland.
She signaled from the bench she was leaning no, and hours later she made it official.
Her problem was something called standing.
Standing, In Plain English
To sue over a merger, you have to show it actually hurts you.
The judge was not convinced five streaming subscribers could show that.
Per Gardner, the subscribers’ lawyer got grilled, and he has lost on this exact issue before, when he failed to stop Microsoft from buying Activision.
What This Does Not Mean
The judge did not say the merger is legal. She said these particular plaintiffs did not have the right to bring the case.
The subscribers were always the weakest of the four lawsuits. The 12 states are up tomorrow, and they do not have the same problem, because states get to sue as law enforcers.
Per Gardner, the ruling does not say much about how she’ll treat the states’ case. But Paramount is probably feeling good about this judge right now.
Tomorrow Is The Real Fight
Paramount smells blood. In its court filing Thursday ahead of tomorrow’s hearing, the studio called the states’ case “one of the weakest merger challenges in modern antitrust history.” It also formally answered the shareholder lawsuit over the alleged Trump side deal, calling it recycled allegations.
Friday, 10 a.m. Pacific: the 12 states ask this same judge for an emergency freeze. That’s the filing that uses the deleted Batgirl movie as evidence of what mega-mergers do.
The states want an answer by July 22, the earliest day Paramount says it can close. Every DC domino my insiders have described waits on it.
(Update: They got their freeze. And then the whole fight moved to a full trial.)
