Now that Paramount has reached a settlement with the 12 states that were suing to block its $110 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), the studio is even closer to becoming one of the world’s biggest production houses. In addition to spending at least $300 million more on film and TV projects produced in the US, Paramount says that it will release a minimum of 30 movies annually after it absorbs WBD. On paper, these goals make it sound like Paramount is trying to ensure that the entertainment industry won’t be harmed by its WBD acquisition. But when you look at the studios’ recent output, it seems very much like Paramount CEO David Ellison is making promises to the public that he might not be able to keep.
In a statement about the settlement, California Attorney General Rob Bonta stressed that the settlement was designed to maintain consistent film output and domestic production while “protecting the livelihoods of workers above and below the line.” (Of course, any redundancies caused by a merger of this scale will likely lead to layoffs, which makes Bonta’s claim that the settlement “protects workers, jobs, and Hollywood” questionable in the first place.) In a statement of their own, Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) president Sean Astin and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland thanked Bonta and noted that the settlement represents “the lowest standards that our employers must meet.”
Though the acquisition — which has not yet officially been finalized — would permanently fuse Paramount and WBD, the settlement only requires the newly merged company to adhere to a few rules for just five years. In the first two years, Paramount/WBD has to either put out 30 films annually or pay $30 million per film into healthcare and retirement funds managed by Hollywood’s biggest unions. During the following three years, the merged studio would need to release 32 films annually, and if it fails to meet any of these requirements during this five-year period, it will be forced to sell off its 49 percent stake in Miramax Studios to one of its competitors.
In terms of overall output, these proposed goals would be a step up for both Paramount and WBD as separate corporate entities. Over the past six years (including projects slated to debut later in 2026), Paramount has released an average of 15 films annually while WBD has averaged 17. Assuming that the newly merged studio will stick to Paramount and WBD’s previously announced release slates for 2027 and 2028, it would need to put more than a few new projects on the board in order to avoid multimillion dollar penalties. But that probably isn’t all that much of a concern to Paramount because the settlement doesn’t require the new company to produce the projects necessary to hit its annual movie quota.
Paramount/WBD could fulfill its obligations by distributing films that it acquires from other production houses. These films would carry the Paramount/WBD branding, but they would be the products of labor carried out by teams with no direct connection to the studio. Paramount/WBD could also flood the zone with completely new, original films it greenlights and finances itself. But many of those movies could feel less ambitious because the settlement only requires that 20 percent of them have production budgets over $50 million.
Paramount appears to have convinced Bonta and his fellow attorneys general that absorbing WBD will give it the ability to basically double its usual output. But that logic presumes every single aspect of both studios’ production pipelines will continue to operate normally once Paramount and WBD become one. Though Paramount/WBD could ramp internal production up, what feels much more likely to happen is the studio doing the bare minimum to abide by the settlement’s terms. Everything about this settlement makes it seem like Ellison is playing a long game, and after those guardrails disappear in five years, Paramount/WBD will be in an even stronger position to shape the broader entertainment landscape.
