Are the DGA and IATSE’s Conditions for a Paramount Settlement Realistic? We Weigh All 9

"We cannot overemphasize how damaging the current timeline for the trial … is to an already struggling industry," the letter reads.

There's real urgency here, but not without some important caveats.

The letter also included nine conditions the guilds want to see Paramount meet and agree to in order to address all of their concerns about the merger. The usual suspects, like theatrical windows and total output of films were covered, but also a request that Paramount continue to license content as a buyer and seller and to keep active a linear HBO channel, as well as quotas about filming in the U.S. Related Stories 'American Doctor' Review: Three Doctors Travel to Gaza in a Bracing and Essential Documentary About Treating the Despair of an Ongoing Genocide Of Course 'Airplane II: The Sequel' Isn't Better Than 'Airplane,' but It's Much Funnier Than It Gets Credit for

"Our goal, with respect to the proposed merger, has always been to achieve an outcome that ensures a vibrant, competitive marketplace for the production, distribution, and licensing of film and television programming that serves the interests of consumers and filmmakers alike," the letter continues. "We believe that these conditions, if secured through a binding agreement, will largely serve this purpose."

Let's set aside whether all of these things would be enough for Bonta or to satisfy antitrust law. Some of the conditions are pretty big asks regardless of a lawsuit, so we wanted to break down each term one by one.

Implementing this would directly address labor concerns and job losses that typically come from mega media mergers. They want to avoid something like the Disney-Fox merger, where the 20th Century and Searchlight labels still exist as divisions within Disney, but the marketing, production, and distribution teams are largely consolidated under one roof. Same with Amazon and MGM, arguably to a greater degree.

Paramount has indicated it wouldn't be making significant labor cuts in order to address the $80 billion of debt the combined companies will carry upon merging, and to meet Paramount's own promises of 30 movies a year , they'll need to keep around a lot of people. But it's hard to imagine they wouldn't want to eliminate some redundancy and merge some functionality rather than make each studio completely autonomous. Could be a big ask.

Paramount has already made this exact promise in terms of the number of films per studio and the theatrical window, though with one key difference. DGA and IATSE up the ante a little and call on Paramount to extend its theatrical window to 120 days before SVOD, whereas Paramount's current promise as outlined in the reported terms to AMC and Regal only have a 90-day SVOD minimum. 120 days would be among the longest streaming window for any movie or studio, reserved for the biggest of blockbusters or filmmakers like Christopher Nolan, who not incidentally is the president of the DGA.

As far as we know, an average percentage of films licensed from third parties isn't a publicly tracked piece of data, so this is already a tough one. But essentially what they don't want to see is a combined Warnermount shutting its doors to other content and distributors for their streamers now that they're flush with IP of their own.

HBO Max has output deals with A24 and TCM, for instance, while Paramount+ and Showtime has historically had a first look at Bleecker Street. In theory, a combined or bundled HBO Max and Paramount+ with more subscribers might be able to better compete with Netflix in securing other licensing deals and bolster their own streamers, so we suspect it might look to do more licensing, not less.

This one has the same challenges as the theatrical films, but with a lot more divisions. WBD has HBO, which would make sense to keep independent, but also WBTV that produces shows like "Abbott Elementary" and "Ted Lasso," and its Discovery networks like HGTV and Food Network shows. Paramount has Paramount Television, which makes Taylor Sheridan's shows but also Netflix's "Little House on the Prairie" and "Emily in Paris" and Amazon's "Ride or Die," all in addition to Showtime, MTV, and others.

The sheer amount of IP, production capabilities, and bulk in its cable networks is the whole point of the merger , and keeping brands like HBO independent is in Paramount's best interest, but there's likely some fat on the bone amid all those properties. Would it make sense to have some of those banners operate under one roof or for some of the weaker performing brands to be sold or shuttered altogether? DGA and IATSE don't want to see jobs lost or fewer opportunities, but they know there's bound to be changes and consolidation under any merger, no matter the conditions.

We weren't expecting this one. A demand to keep HBO on the physical airwaves but also available through other providers like Fubo and Amazon to us has less to do with antitrust or job loss as it does just continuing to make HBO accessible and affordable for the general public, though it also has residuals implications.

Paramount shuttered the linear Showtime channel even though it kept the branding, but it's largely a shell of what it was years ago. DGA and IATSE could be thinking long term about preserving the value and the jobs that come from keeping HBO a recognizable, iconic brand, and the linear channel has something to do with that.

According to data from ProdPro , Warner Bros. between 2021 and 2025 (excluding 2023) has produced 28 feature films in the United States and 127 episodic series, while Paramount has produced 25 films and 113 series. On average, that's 60 episodic series between the two combined studios and roughly 13 films, which would presume that a little less than half of the films the combined company intends to release each year would need to be shot here. Of note though, the ProdPro data shows that both companies have seen their U.S. productions drop significantly post-strikes in both 2024 and 2...

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