The centerpiece of Monday’s settlement is the movie pledge: the combined company puts out at least 30 movies a year, or pays $30 million for every film it comes up short.
Former FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya — who has spent months campaigning against the merger, warning it means fewer jobs and higher streaming prices — read the fine print and posted about it on X.
The Pledge Is To Release Movies, Not Make Them
Per Bedoya, citing Bloomberg, the pledge covers distribution, not production.
“They’re no longer even pledging to make 30 films a year. Just to distribute that amount,” Bedoya wrote, and that “would include re-releases.”
The penalty money doesn’t go to film crews or theater owners either, Bedoya wrote. It goes to “some fund that a government official has to then distribute.”
“Rent is due on the 1st of the month, not two years from now,” Bedoya continued, adding the settlement “will be next to impossible to meaningfully enforce.”
In plain English: the settlement is a list of promises about how Paramount will behave, not a breakup or a forced sale. Somebody has to police promises.
‘Pay Attention To Re-Releases’
CBN’s Paramount insiders pointed straight at Bedoya’s post, which they called a “screed.”
“Commies know they lost big,” the insiders said. “And pay attention to ‘Re Releases.'”
CBN readers know exactly why.
On August 13, the same source laid out the plan: Paramount and Warner Bros. putting directors’ cuts back in theaters as a “celebration of movies” series — “Star Trek (JJs), Snyder, Ayer, Mission Impossible, etc.” and “Harry Potter too of course” — with red carpets, director Q&As, and new Blu-rays and collector merch to follow.
“Easy quick way to make money from loyal fandoms and gauge demand for future projects,” the source said.
On August 31, the source added: “Many more to come in the next 6-12 months,” with every property from 1970-2000 getting “a second and third look.”
Then it started happening.
Paramount ran the Star Trek 60th Anniversary Event September 4-8, putting the director’s cuts of The Motion Picture and The Wrath of Khan in more than 750 theaters with Enterprise popcorn vessels at the concessions.
Optimus Prime: Awakening, the Transformers: The Movie 40th-anniversary release, is in theaters right now.
Every One Of Them Counts
Under the settlement, all of it counts toward the pledge.
What Bonta’s side calls a loophole is the exact play CBN’s source described five weeks before it became part of a legal agreement, and the combined company owns the biggest library in Hollywood to run it with.
The two names on that August list that DC fans care about are Snyder and Ayer.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League on the big screen and the never-released Ayer Cut were the obvious reads then. They still are.
The insiders’ full read on what’s coming — the “panic” inside Warner Bros., and the ax after the “kumbaya” phase — is here.
