The day after 12 state attorneys general sued to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, the Writers Guild of America has filed its own lawsuit to impede the $111 billion mega-deal.
The labor union representing film and television writers filed a suit in U.S. district court for the northern district of California on Tuesday alleging that the deal breaks antitrust law and would harm wages and working conditions for writers by creating a single mega-buyer of film and television programming with outsized power.
“If Paramount succeeds in buying Warner Bros., the merged firm will be the largest buyer of original film and television programming in the United States, eliminating vigorous competition from a major film and television studio that has operated for more than a century,” the complaint reads.
The lawsuit continues, “The proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger (“Merger”) threatens the economic and creative health of the American entertainment industry. The Merger would eliminate competition for buying film and television writing, resulting in suppressed compensation, worse deal terms, and reduced programming volume and diversity. The merger must be blocked.”
In a statement, a Paramount Skydance spokesperson doubled down on the company’s previous assertions that the merger would lead to a healthier Hollywood with more opportunities for its workers. There will be “more development slates, more series and film greenlights, and our continued strong commitment to working with the guild’s writers across our brands,” the spokesperson stated.
“As a century-old storytelling company, we have deep respect for the WGA and its members, as evidenced by our commitments in our recently renewed collective bargaining agreement, and we remain committed to building a combined company that expands opportunities for writers and creative talent for generations to come,” they added. “The alternative to our transaction is a continued delcine of the entertainment industry increasingly dominated by big tech companies.”
Warner Bros. Discovery, which is also a defendant, declined to comment. Read the full complaint here.
In its complaint, the WGA paints a picture of two major vertically integrated studios that currently compete for scripts and talent, with direct benefits for writers, who can receive multiple bids for their work and pit one studio against another. Knock-on benefits include a diversity of storytelling for consumers as companies seek to differentiate themselves from their competitors and a greater volume of projects as a firms vie for consumer interest and take creative risks alongside seemingly safer bets.
The lawsuit argues that the combination of Warner Bros. and Paramount would disrupt this fragile harmony. “With fewer competitors, the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. entity would have both the incentive and the ability to lower costs by suppressing writers’ wages and reducing output. Writers will be paid less and have fewer employment opportunities,” the complaint reads. Consumers would have fewer, and more homogenized, entertainment options, it argues.
According to the union, this merger would create a company with more than 30 percent market share, breaching Supreme Court precedent that found market share exceeding that amount as “presumptively anticompetitive.” According to WGA data, Paramount and Warner Bros. collectively accounted for 35 percent of film writing jobs between 2021 and 2024, 36 percent of television writing projects between 2022 and 2025 and 38 percent of overall deals between 2021 and 2024.
The WGA also casts doubt on Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison’s assurances that a merged Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery would each release 15 films a year theatrically and will create new opportunities in entertainment, saying that these remarks “do not alter the Merger’s likely effects and ignore historical precedent and the basic limitations of an annual release calendar.”
The union, moreover, claims that the $79 billion in debt that the merged company would assume will create an incentive to conduct mass layoffs and reduce the number of projects it produces, rather than augment it.
And the labor group raises the specter of coordination among major companies to undercut writers in their deals. Amid significant industry consolidation, and especially after a Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, studios “would be motivated to underbid on writers’ work, an anticompetitive practice that becomes easier to sustain and harder to detect in a further consolidated market,” the lawsuit argues.
The WGA’s move to sue to block the merger is in character with the union’s well-documented opposition to corporate consolidation in entertainment. Since the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal was announced, the union has been vocally opposed to the transaction, with its leaders participating in town halls opposing the deal and speaking to its potential consequences.
The union is known for taking on big fights when it feels it needs to, most recently waging a 148-day strike against major studios in 2023 over issues including sustainable wages and working conditions in the streaming era and AI. In 2019, the union flexed its muscle as it successfully pushed members to fire their agents en masse during its fight over talent agency conduct and packaging fees.
In a statement about the lawsuit, Writers Guild West president Michele Mulroney said, “If Paramount succeeds in buying Warner Bros., the merged firm will be the largest buyer of original film and television programming in the United States.”
She added, “This would eliminate competition in an already consolidated industry, threatening the livelihoods of entertainment workers and the creative diversity of TV and film. We applaud the dozen state Attorneys General who have stepped up to enforce our antitrust laws and are proud to file suit alongside them.”