{"id":481276,"date":"2026-05-12T18:35:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:35:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481276\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T18:35:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T18:35:22","slug":"paramount-says-without-wbd-merger-neither-paramount-nor-hbo-max-could-catch-up-to-netflix-disney-or-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/481276\/","title":{"rendered":"Paramount Says Without WBD Merger, Neither Paramount+ nor HBO Max Could Catch Up to Netflix, Disney or Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tParamount Skydance<\/a> is continuing to insist that the David Ellison-led company\u2019s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> will bring \u201cnew competitive energy to the entertainment ecosystem,\u201d in the words of its top lawyer \u2014 not reduce competition.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn May 7, Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim sent a letter to California Attorney General Rob Bonta, in which Delrahim \u201creiterate[d] our continued commitment and support to Californian movie theaters and audiences\u201d coming \u201cin response to certain misinformation about the marketplace expressed in recent public commentary.\u201d The letter was reported<\/a> earlier by Semafor.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount is lobbying the California AG about the alleged pro-competitive benefits of a combined Paramount-WBD as Bonta and other state attorneys general are reviewing the deal<\/a> for potential antitrust issues. In a call with reporters Monday<\/a>, Bonta reiterated that the proposed deal has \u201cred flags everywhere\u201d and that his office is examining the merger\u2019s potential to result in higher prices, lower wages and fewer jobs, less choice and less competition. The California AG recently joined with several other states to file a lawsuit seeking to block the Nexstar-Tegna deal<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the letter, Delrahim argued that Paramount and WBD together will \u201cdrive meaningful improvements for movie theaters and their audiences\u201d and he reiterated Ellison\u2019s commitment that the merged company will release at least 30 films per year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition, he said that Paramount+ and HBO Max<\/a> separately do not have the scale to \u201ccompete effectively\u201d against bigger subscription streaming players Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu, and Amazon\u2019s Prime Video.<\/p>\n

\n\tBoth Paramount+ and HBO Max \u201clack the scale to compete effectively against the leading SVODs [subscription video-on-demand services],\u201d wrote Delrahim. \u201cAbsent something transformative, neither party is positioned to grow to a scale where they would catch up to the leading streamers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCiting Nielsen estimates for December 2025, he said Paramount had only 5.8% of U.S. subscription VOD viewership, and Warner Bros. Discovery had 5.0%. \u201cBy comparison, the top three streaming subscription platforms together capture 65% of all U.S. SVOD viewers \u2014 Netflix with 32.5%, Disney 16.7%, and Amazon 15.3%,\u201d he wrote. If the deal is completed, Paramount plans to combine Paramount+ and WBD\u2019s HBO Max<\/a> in some way.<\/p>\n

\n\tMeanwhile, Delrahim downplayed the market power of the companies\u2019 movie studios if they were consolidated. \u201cParamount\u2019s relationship with theater operators will not materially change after the merger,\u201d he maintained. \u201cCombined, Paramount and WBD only represent about 25% of the domestic box office, with at least a half dozen other distributors competing to show their films in theaters\u201d including Disney, Universal, Sony, Amazon MGM Studios and Lionsgate. The 25% market share estimate is based on domestic box office grosses for 4,000 films over the past five years as compiled by OpusData.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn this environment, Paramount must continue to compete aggressively to find outlets for its films, with many other substitutes available for theaters to fill their screens,\u201d Delrahim wrote.<\/p>\n

\n\tDelrahim, who before joining Paramount had advised Skydance Media on the Paramount Global acquisition, also said that Paramount-WBD is not comparable to Disney\u2019s $71 billion deal to acquire 21st Century Fox<\/a> assets that closed in 2019.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe noted: \u201cEven before it acquired Fox, Disney started reducing its theatrical releases, releasing only 7 and 10 films theatrically in 2017 and 2018, respectively. Paramount, in contrast, has already increased its theatrical releases dramatically and has committed to distributing 30+ feature films following the WBD merger. Paramount and WBD\u2019s studios will each release at least 15 films per year, and maintain full staff to support production and distribution, to ensure this target is hit. No such commitment was made when Disney acquired Fox.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also argued that \u201cDisney\u2019s motivation for acquiring Fox was largely about acquiring majority control of Hulu,\u201d whereas \u201cParamount\u2019s motivation for acquiring WBD, in contrast, is maximizing output across the entertainment ecosystem (including theatrical release) to compete more effectively with much larger competitors in Netflix, Disney, and Amazon. Increasing production and distribution volume is a key lever that Paramount has identified to achieve internal revenue targets for the combined company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat said, more films in theaters does not necessarily mean more money. Paramount, in reporting Q1 2026 earnings<\/a>, said it expects \u201csignificantly lower theatrical revenue year-over-year due to lower average box office revenue per film across more releases\u201d in 2026. A big part of that is that the studio faces a difficult year-over-year comparison because of 2025\u2019s \u201cMission: Impossible \u2013 The Final Reckoning\u201d (which took in nearly $600 million at the global box office). But it shows that simply churning out more titles doesn\u2019t actually correlate with bigger economic impact.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month,\u00a0Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders overwhelmingly voted in favor<\/a> of the Paramount deal. The pact still requires approval by European regulators.<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount, before it won the WBD deal, said its\u00a0proposed WBD takeover had cleared a milestone at the Justice Department<\/a>, after the expiration of the statutory waiting period following Paramount\u2019s \u201ccertification of compliance\u201d with the DOJ\u2019s second request for information under the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust act. However, the DOJ has the latitude to challenge a merger even after the HSR waiting period expiration. In March,\u00a0the acting head of the Justice Department\u2019s antitrust division, Omeed Assefi, said the Paramount-WBD deal will\u00a0\u201cabsolutely not\u201d be on a fast-track for approval due to political reasons<\/a>, in the context of the Ellison family\u2019s friendly ties to Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paramount Skydance is continuing to insist that the David Ellison-led company\u2019s $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":481277,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[265],"tags":[18,117,7948,19,17,12911,6928,128,31461],"class_list":{"0":"post-481276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-hbo-max","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-paramount-plus","14":"tag-paramount-skydance","15":"tag-tv","16":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116563052255532279","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=481276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/481276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/481277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=481276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=481276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=481276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}