California AG Defends Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal Against Antitrust Heat

Rob Bonta spent 45 minutes Monday defending California's antitrust settlement that clears the way for Paramount and Warner Bros. to link up. The state's attorney general came out swinging, calling the deal "very strong" and pointing to independent monitoring provisions and projected job growth in Hollywood as wins for the state.

But here's the thing: the settlement doesn't include the three words Bonta's office had been pushing for—"robust structural remedies." That's a notable gap when you're claiming victory in an antitrust case, and it's why skeptics are side-eyeing this one.

The deal's structured with oversight to keep the merged company honest, which matters. More Hollywood jobs would be real too. Still, when your original ask for hard structural safeguards doesn't make it into the final agreement, you're working with less leverage than you started with. Bonta's framing this as a win, and maybe it is relative to what could've happened. But the optics of settling without those explicit guardrails built in—that's what people are clocking.

Read the full story at Variety → https://variety.com/2026/film/news/rob-bonta-defends-paramount-settlement-1236871365/