While interviewing Will McIntosh, president of digital platforms and ventures for Versant, which owns Fandango, at TheGrill 2026, TheWrap Managing Editor Roger Cheng posed that question to the audience.

Crickets.

While most people know Fandango for selling movie tickets, it had quietly become the No. 2 transactional VOD platform in the U.S. behind only Amazon (it used to be known as Vudu). Currently, Versant is working to also establish Fandango as a free streaming brand.

To that end, McIntosh announced at TheGrill a partnership between Versant and Lionsgate that will make all five previously released “Hunger Games” movies available to stream for free on Fandango’s platform with minimal commercial interruptions for two weeks before tickets go on sale for “The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping,” which hits theaters in the U.S. in November.

“That’s a very prescriptive way where we’re gonna take the one thing we’re known for — ticket sales — and tie it back to something new that we’re trying to build with this free streaming service,” the Versant executive explained, adding, “I think it speaks to [the fact that] we can’t do it on our own and we need partners like Lionsgate to really lean in. Fortunately, they do.”

That type of novel program is an example of the new risk-taking spirit taking hold at Versant, which spun out of cable giant Comcast only 10 months ago. McIntosh said that Versant defines the company by its four verticals: business news and finance (CNBC), political opinion news (MS NOW), sports and golf lifestyle (Golf Channel, GolfNow) and genre sports and entertainment (E!, Syfy, Oxygen, Fandango, Rotten Tomatoes and USA Network). The broader goal is move away from its reliance on the ever-shrinking cable TV revenue.

That ambition — and it’s smaller size — has played an instrumental role in shaping Versant’s “entrepreneurial” approach to expansion, acquisition and growth. Over its short stretch as a public company, it has made four acquisitions, including the cloud-based business management software platform formerly known as the Indy Cinema Group and Full Swing, the No. 1 golf simulator tech company.

Both acquisitions had been on leaders’ minds prior to Versant’s spin-off, but they never had the freedom to truly pursue either at Comcast.

“My experiences inside of Comcast were largely fantastic. My group was able to operate as a well-funded start-up inside of a company that had a lot of capital for a long time,” McIntosh said. “But the last five years there, it was very difficult to get some of our best ideas greenlit and to continue to grow our businesses the way we had historically, and for all the right reasons.”

“Comcast, a big company, was building multiple billion-dollar theme parks. We were spending billions of dollars trying to get Peacock to scale, and Comcast has to constantly invest in its broadband infrastructure. What that meant for businesses like GolfNow and Fandango is that there wasn’t a lot of capital left to reinvest,” McIntosh added. Since Versant’s move into its own, publicly traded company, the red tape and bureaucracy has been significantly cut down.

“The biggest difference is we’re able to be entrepreneurial, nimble. There’s a very straight line to [Versant CEO] Mark [Lazarus] to get a ‘yes’ or a ‘no,'” McIntosh explained. “A lot of the early organic growth initiatives and some of the M&A we’ve done were all ideas that we had inside of Comcast that we just could not act on. I think it’s put us in a place to be entrepreneurial.”

With all of its acquisitions, Versant wants to expand its ability to “connect people with what they’re passionate about” by tying established media platforms and brands to new, transactional technologies. “If you look at our golf vertical today, roughly 50% of our revenue comes from the media assets and 50% of our revenue comes from the digital and transactional assets,” McIntosh said Wednesday. “The goal over the next three to five years is to do that in the other three verticals. We’re just getting started, but we’re well on our way.”

Like every company in its position, Versant faces a constant “build vs. buy” question with every acquisition it plans and considers. For years, the answer to that question has always depended on how much organic growth investors believe can be generated by an asset after it is acquired. However, McIntosh admitted that AI has further complicated that already complex equation.

“Because [on] what’s going on with AI, I think the idea of building and building quickly is much different now than it was even two or three years ago,” he said. “I do think that ‘build vs. buy’ question is a good one, and I do think we’ll actually probably build more in the future.”

The post How Versant Is Letting Its ‘Entrepreneurial’ Spirit Take the Lead Post-Comcast appeared first on TheWrap.

The deal closes out Versant’s first round of distribution renewals since becoming a standalone public company earlier this year, as subscriber losses continue to pressure the traditional pay-TV business. Versant’s linear distribution revenue fell 6.3% year over year in the second quarter, primarily due to subscriber declines, though contractual rate increases partially offset the losses.

Under the agreement, USA Network, MS NOW, CNBC, Golf Channel, Oxygen True Crime, E! and SYFY will remain available to Verizon customers. Financial terms were not disclosed.

“Verizon is a valued distribution partner, and this long-term renewal reflects the clear value our portfolio delivers to distributors and audiences,” Versant chief revenue and business officer Dave Pietrycha said in a statement. “We are pleased to continue bringing Verizon customers the premium live news, sports and entertainment programming they value.”

The Verizon pact follows two other multi-year renewals with large pay-TV distributors, one in the U.S. and one in Canada, that Versant CEO Mark Lazarus disclosed during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

With the latest deal, Versant has renewed every distribution partnership that was set to expire in 2026. The company completed its spinoff from Comcast in January, taking control of a collection of cable networks at a time when cord-cutting continues to shrink the traditional television bundle.

“Versant offers an iconic portfolio of brands and we’re pleased to continue bringing their popular lineup of news, sports and entertainment to Verizon customers,” Verizon SVP of consumer growth Matt Coakley said. “We look forward to continuing our partnership alongside a diverse array of premium programming available to Fios customers.”

Completing those renewals gives Versant some stability as it confronts the broader decline of the cable bundle. Lazarus acknowledged that pressure during the company’s second-quarter earnings call, saying Versant was “not blind to the normal headwinds that everyone in the industry is facing.”

The post Versant Completes 2026 Distribution Renewal Cycle With Verizon Deal appeared first on TheWrap.

“The notion that $6 billion of cost-related synergies means the firing of all these people is just completely antiquated,” Gerry Cardinale, founder of RedBird Capital Partners and a major shareholder in the combined company, said during the Bloomberg Screentime conference on Thursday.

Cardinale, who first backed David Ellison at Skydance and helped push through the acquisition of Paramount, said a majority of the projected merger cost savings would come through non-labor means. He cited the unification of the tech stack that the different platforms live on, as well as selling real estate, as other ways to cut costs.

His appearance at the event comes a day after a judge signed off on a settlement between Paramount and a dozen state attorneys general that essentially sealed what had been a contentious deal, which is projected to close on Oct. 6. Cardinale said he believed the combined companies represent a growth investment, and to give it a couple of quarters before things normalize and you start to see its potential trajectory.

While he said there would be some job losses, he stressed that wouldn’t be the main focus.

“You don’t spend $40 billion a year making movies and think that your entire premise of your business plan is to fire everybody in Hollywood,” he said. “It’s just the opposite.”

But his sentiment stands in contrast with a Los Angeles County-commissioned study that said the merger would result in the loss of nearly 4,500 film and TV jobs and cost the region $2.8 billion in economy value.

As part of the settlement, Paramount is required to produce 30 films for the first two years, and 32 films for the following three years, as well as invest at least $1.5 billion in U.S. productions over that five-year stretch.

Coziness with Trump

Much of the criticism over the merger was related to the Ellison family’s relationship with President Donald Trump, with father Larry Ellison making no secret of his support of the MAGA movement.

Cardinale downplayed David Ellison’s relationship with Trump, calling it “way overstated.” He argued that with such a pro-business administration, every CEO in corporate America should have a relationship with the president.

Indeed, the CEOs of all of the top tech companies have largely paid tribute to Trump through gifts and donations.

“Having that relationship does not mean in any way that there’s this coziness that everyone wants it to be,” he said. “The inference on cozy here is just not appropriate.”

Cardinale touched on several other topics. They include:

• He sees an opportunity for the combined streaming businesses to grow, noting that there is little overlap between HBO Max and Paramount+’s subscriber base.
• He believes valuations in American sports team are way too high. While he didn’t comment on the recent deal led by Bob Iger to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion, he said he wouldn’t have done the deal.
• Cardinale worked with Ben Affleck to develop AI startup InterPositive, which was sold to Netflix. His firm has a unit called RedBird X that is incubating seven new AI businesses.
• He lauded David Ellison’s ability to draw talent to him. “People are incredibly loyal to him,” he said. “You can’t fake that. And let me tell you, there’s no last name in the world that delivers that. You either are it or you’re not, and people want to work for him because he’s genuine.”

The post RedBird Founder Says Majority of Paramount-WBD Merger Cost Savings Won’t Come From Jobs appeared first on TheWrap.

In his ruling, the federal judge said that antitrust laws don’t apply to the AI overviews of news stories provided for articles searched on Google.

“Plaintiffs have pleaded only that they have an ‘expectation’ that Google will send them search ​traffic if they make their content available for free,” Mehta wrote. “But an expectation is not an agreement. It is simply how a general search engine works.”

Penske Media Corporation, which owns entertainment trades The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline and Variety as well as other publications like Rolling Stone, Gold Derby, Billboard, IndieWire and Artforum, is one of several news organizations that have sounded the alarm about the negative impact that AI overviews of articles have had on their business. Many websites have faced a drastic downturn in web traffic over recent years, arguing that Google providing AI overviews of articles has depleted clicks into their ad- and subscription-supported reporting. In the suit, PMC alleged that it has lost revenue from the new practice.

When the lawsuit was originally filed in 2025, PMC argued that Google is unlawfully leveraging its search engine by only including publishers that permit the use of their articles in AI summaries in its web search results. PMC also argued that a fifth of Google searches linked to sites also display “Overviews,” and expects that percentage to increase. The lawsuit stated Google should be required to pay publishers to summarize news articles or use them to train its AI systems without this leverage.

PMC and Google did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chegg, an education platform that joined PMC in the lawsuit alleging Google illegally scraped its comment, also did not respond to a request for comment.

PMC will be allowed to refile its lawsuit against the tech company as it was not filed with prejudice.

The post Penske Media Lawsuit Against Google for AI Search Summaries of Articles Dismissed by Judge appeared first on TheWrap.

“Do not sleep on live, particularly in this time where audiences are craving authenticity,” Larson said Wednesday afternoon at the DGA Theater Complex. “For the creators that I work with that add live into their repertoire, it supercharges their fandom and creates such close connection in a way that is really hard to quantify.”

Larson went on to warn that live-streaming isn’t “for the faint of heart,” largely because the popular format doesn’t allow creators to hide behind editing. But if a creator can handle it, Larson called the option a “powerful medium.”

The YouTube head took the stage for the “Creator Capital: Navigating the Future of Media” panel, which was presented by City National Bank. The panel was moderated by Marie-Josée Cantin Johnson, the senior vice president of strategy, AgilLink and Exactuals, Entertainment and Sports Banking at City National Bank. Larson wasn’t the only one on the panel who emphasized authenticity. Travel creator Olivia Ferney, known for the popular travelwithlivii Instagram account, warned creators against signing equity deals too quickly and explained why she doesn’t use AI in her content.

“As an entrepreneur first, I think that I’m overly cautious with a lot of these deals. I would urge everyone in this room, especially if you’re a creator who’s growing, to just look everything over,” Ferney said.

In the wake of creators like Alix Earle aligning with Poppi, more and more creators have been looking to sign equity deals with brands rather than just signing more standard brand partnerships. Though Ferney acknowledged that the move is “trendy,” she pointed to how often businesses fail.

“As a young business person, make sure that you are also setting yourself up for success. Don’t take ownership in 20 companies, thinking, ‘I’m going to exit out in a year and be set for life’ because you also left money on the table that might set you or your kids or your family up in the future. Only be a part of projects that mean something to you, and be a little bit cautious,” Ferney said.

The creator is in the middle of signing her first equity deal, though she estimated that about 11 or 12 have been brought to her. Ferney’s deal is with the AI assistant company, Tab. Though she said the company integrates well into her business, Ferney was adamant about not using AI in her content.

“I believe that AI can be an amazing tool in my business life,” Ferney said. “On the creator side — and you will hear every creator on planet Earth say authenticity is key, and it sounds so overused now — but my gosh, am I sick and tired of seeing the same stuff be repeated online with everybody trying to go viral and make it make millions. So for me, I sit with my notepad, I brainstorm, I turn my phone off and just think, ‘How can I connect with my people? What do my people want to see? How can I make them feel more connected to me? How can we make the client feel represented properly and just make entertainment?'”

Though the panel cautioned against equity deals, Jo Cronk, co-CEO of Whalar, emphasized that she sees creators serving as brand consultants as being a major trend in the next 12 months.

“The time has come for creators to have a much bigger seat at many tables,” Cronk said. “They’re literally the tip of the spear of what’s happening, not just trends but with communities. What is their audience asking for? What are they desiring? So much happens in the DMs that none of us can see unless we’re the recipient. Actually bringing them in as consultants for what’s going on in culture, with creativity and with other other creators is going to be really critical.”

Cronk emphasized that creators have a higher return on investment on ad spend than any other media channel, including TV. If ad investment in creators is done well, ROI can be 2.4 compared to the typical 1.2 ROI from TV. Cronk also believes that spending from advertisers will continue to move to the creator economy as the market matures and evolves.

“The dollars took forever to move from print to digital to mobile. We’re in this moment right now. The creator economy is tracking to be worth $44 billion by the end of the year. It’s growing at 4x the pace of any other media channel, but the creator economy is still only representing 3.9% of all advertising spend,” Cronk said. “Like the maths don’t math, but it will get there.”

“Behavior takes a long time to change,” Larson added, agreeing with Cronk. “Now I have brands coming to me saying, ‘Kim, who should we work with? Here’s the type of audience we want to attract, and here are our marketing goals.’ That has been a shift I would say within the last 18 months.”

The post YouTube Head Warns Creators to ‘Not Sleep on Live,’ Noting That it ‘Supercharges’ Fandoms appeared first on TheWrap.

That’s what AI researcher Yves Bergquist is trying to achieve with his startup CortoAI and its agent, Geist. Bergquist, who is also an AI researcher and principal for AI Enterprise Systems at the Entertainment Technology Center at USC, showed off the tool at TheWrap’s Grill business conference.

Geist promises to track, model and predict the cultural zeitgeist, employing a custom-built model, agentic AI and vast amounts of data shared on social media to produce its results. And for the folks in Hollywood, Bergquist makes it clear this is not generative AI, but the kind of analytical AI that’s been around for decades, with an intent to not eliminate jobs, but to make your job of figuring out what will resonate a little bit easier.

“We call it ‘strategic AI’ because it helps people build strategy and make decisions,” Bergquist writes in a white paper shared with TheWrap for TheGrill. “And we have it our way, it’s going to help both Hollywood and Madison Avenue move at the speed of culture.”

Bergquist said that dozens of Hollywood studios and large brands, including Lego, Levi’s, Unilever and Coca-Cola, are already using Geist and have used its insights to inform the design and launch of new products, write new stories and create new campaigns.

A critical part of the white paper is the break down of the 40 fastest-growing entertainment genres and properties of the last six months, with the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto VI topping the chart, followed by “Spider-Man” and HBO Max’s “The Pitt.” Microdramas as a medium is No. 4, while comic book franchises, anime and several videos games make an appearance.

To get the full list and description of Geist, check out the white paper below.

The post Tapping AI to Make Sense of Gen Z’s Pop Culture Obsessions appeared first on TheWrap.

According to writer/director and AI creator Eliza McNitt, humans need to stay on-camera. And there’s a certain artificial construct she wants to see less of.

“Humans are at the heart of the story, and the actors you see in the film are all human,” she said at TheWrap’s The Future of Filmmaking panel at the publication’s business conference, TheGrill. “I feel very strongly that we should unplug Tilly Norwood.”

McNitt stressed the importance of humans in the process, a sentiment shared by by her co-panelists at TheGrill business conference, a duo of creatives who are also working in the emerging field of AI in film. Jason Zada, the founder and chief creative officer of Secret Level (a self-proclaimed “entertainment studio powered by AI”) and Ori Winokur, Head of Music & Entertainment Partnerships at Artlist, which provides AI tools for creators.

During the panel, McNitt touted her AI-assisted short film, “Ancestra,” showing a trailer to the crowd. The filmmaker, who previously helmed the three-part virtual reality experience “SPHERES” (produced by Darren Aronofsky and starring Millie Bobby Brown and Jessica Chastain), spoke about the difficulty of adding a newborn baby to the short, saying that the options were to “get really lucky on set” or “a CG baby, or you can have a doll.”

Or she could turn to the emerging technology. McNitt shared how she worked with Google by feeding her own baby photos into artificial intelligence to create a digital infant — one that looks like her — to insert into the scenes.

“We did a bunch of tests where I was just laying on couch holding air, and a day later the team came back to me with this image of a baby in my arms,” McNitt said. “It wasn’t just a baby: It was me. That was the moment that we were like, ‘Holy s–t, this is going to work.'”

Despite this digital advancement, McNitt stressed the importance of having humans around for the key steps in the development process — eliminating “actors” like Tilly Norwood and instead turning to AI for pre- and post-production.

“Now we have this opportunity to really map out the project in pre-production. As a director, these tools allow me to communicate so much more clearly with my crew being able to communicate my vision with proof of concepts and visuals that I would never have been able to make that quickly beforehand,” she said. “I, of course, still work with human storyboard artists and being able to then take that and create an edit before we even shoot ht movie is so helpful for people to see what your intention is. I think in that respect, it just allowed me to really plan so much better and be able to communicate with my team.”

Zada spoke about the company’s upcoming film “Terrarium,” which combines human actors shooting in sparse locations with generated environments meant to heighten the visual scope.

“It’s a hybrid movie, so we shot live-action SAG actors, and we used a bunch of different processes in order to do what you saw there,” Zada said after showing a clip. “Actors were just standing still on a very simple white cyc, and all of a sudden I could move a camera around them and relight them and different stuff.”

Winokur said that, amid everything else he’s learned through working with AI, his biggest takeaway was the need for collaboration and humanity that remains with this emerging technology.

“The most important thing in the process is still the human in the loop and the person directing. You have to have a director with a vision,” Winokur said. “You have to have an amazing team of artists working with the technology. And not only that AI doesn’t make the filmmaking process a one-man show, it’s actually creating new forms of collaboration.”

The post AI Filmmakers Say Humans Need to Be Involved in Productions: ‘We Should Unplug Tilly Norwood’ appeared first on TheWrap.

Just in time for California AG Rob Bonta and Paramount Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim, the two key figures on each side, to unpack the resolution at TheWrap’s annual business conference TheGrill.

Both Bonta and Delrahim appeared on stage (albeit in separate panels) with The Wrap CEO and Editor-in-Chief Sharon Waxman, who asked the questions everyone wanted to ask.

The sessions marked a fitting capper to a remarkable and unpredictable 12 months filled with a bidding war, competing corporate egos, several false starts and a dramatic final stand with between Bonta and Paramount. In a final turn, both Delrahim and Bonta talked up the benefits of the deal.

“When you talk about jobs, an increase from 5% to 40% is massive job increases for the United States, and that’s why IATSE, SAG-AFTRA, the Teamsters, the Laborers, and the Directors Guild of America all support the settlement,” Bonta said, while “vehemently, respectfully” disagreeing with the notion that he caved under political pressure.

“It’s a deal that is pro-competitive. It’s a deal that is transformational. That’s why we committed to it,” Delrahim said. “I’m just grateful for the time and the attention and the professional work that Attorney General Bonta and his 11 other colleagues did to work with us in good faith.”

Despite Delrahim’s claims of “good faith,” there were many bumps on the road to get to the settlement, from a canceled mediation meeting over leaks to a threat by Ellison to move Paramount out of California, risking thousands of jobs and billions in economic output.

But now comes the hard part: making good on the settlement’s requirements and building what Ellison has referred to as a “stronger Hollywood.”

Below is a recap of the key takeaways from Bonta and Delrahim.

What turned the tide in reaching the settlement?

When asked about what was the turning point that made both sides reach a settlement, Bonta told TheWrap it was Paramount deciding to negotiate in good faith.

“They weren’t addressing the concerns that we had in the case,” he said. “When they finally decided to sit down and make real commitments on the issues that we cared about when it came to the antitrust enforcement case, that’s when when we settled the case.”

Meanwhile, Delrahim argued that the key to getting a settlement done was that the 12 states had no antitrust case. He said that their argument that Paramount-WBD would have a combined market share of 27% in the theatrical film market didn’t take Amazon MGM Studios, Lionsgate or A24 into account.

“Once you factor those in, that market share goes below 20%, and that’s assuming you take their time frame from ’22 to ’25 for that market share, which is based on box office revenues,” he said. “That’s just not how antitrust works. So once the facts were out before a judge, it would have never ever held up.”

“Every step of the way when you have a bad case, you’re making precedent, and as a former enforcer, it makes it more difficult for the future. So now, every time the state AGs bring a case, guess what the parties are going to do? They’re going to file the motion we filed,” he continued. “The state AGs, I think, realized there’s not a case here. Why are we doing this? And they realized that delay is not going to help anyone, which is why all the unions and everybody supported that.”

He also credited Ellison himself with getting the deal over the finish line during the Yom Kippur holiday.

“David was incredibly involved in this process himself with the staff. He and I would fly up, come down. He was personally invested and he is the single best client a lawyer can have because he’s incredibly genuine, he’s credible, and as a former producer and a guy who understands his business, he can speak with authority when asked these questions and allegations come up about different parts of the business,” he said. “It is incredible. You don’t even have to prepare because the truth actually is incredibly powerful.”

Though Delrahim said Ellison’s threat to move was “not a bluff,” he dismissed the idea that it played any major role in settling the litigation.

Bonta defends settlement, touts it as “opposite” of Disney-Fox merger

Under the terms of the settlement, Paramount-WBD is required to invest a minimum of $1.5 billion over five years in domestic TV and film production.

It also must release at least 30 films a year in theaters for two years and 32 per year for the following three years. At least four films per year must be independent films and at least 20% must be blockbusters. If Congress passes a federal film tax credit, Paramount agreed that 20% of all film production must be in the U.S. for the first two years of the merger and 30% of the next three.

Bonta told TheWrap that the film requirement is the “opposite” of the Disney-Fox merger, noting that the two companies made about 28 films per year before the combination, which would later drop to 14 films per year.

“If the federal film tax credit passes and a California film tax credit passes, it could be a 700% increase in films being made in the United States. Only about 5%, according to Paramount’s own numbers, of their total film production is made in the United States. That could get to 40%,” he added. “So when you talk about jobs, a 700% increase from 5% to 40% is massive job increases for the United States.”

Additionally, the combined company must negotiate the distribution agreements for Paramount and Warner’s suite of cable networks separately and set up an independent editorial board to oversee CNN and CBS News’ operations.

When asked about the future of CNN, news and free speech, Bonta admitted that he’s concerned about there being too much misinformation and disinformation, but argued that the editorial board would help “ensure journalistic integrity and fact-based, non-biased, objective reporting.” Similarly, Delrahim said that while he understands the political concerns around Ellison’s ownership, he does not believe that CNN and CBS News will “foreclose access” to information.

Other settlement terms include continuing to operate Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio lots for five years, honoring collective bargaining agreements with Hollywood’s unions and making community investments, including a $5 million-per-year contribution to an independent film fund and $9.5 million annually for film and TV career training and development programs to benefit qualified educational institutions and community arts organizations.

Failure to comply with the various commitments in the settlement range from a $30 million penalty per film that misses the theatrical goal to forced divestitures of the company’s 49% Miramax stake within a 12-month period as well as BET, Comedy Central, VH1, Smithsonian, Destination America and Science Channel within a 120-day period.

“The proposed consent decree reflects a settlement between the parties
that is a fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms alleged in the Complaint, and does not violate the law or public policy,” Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín wrote in her order on Wednesday.

Did Bonta cave?

Despite reaching the settlement, some are concerned that the agreement does not go far enough to address the potential harms posed by the merger.

“Allowing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger to move forward with no meaningful structural remedies will cost jobs, mute creativity, weaken independent journalism, and damage our First Amendment rights. The ripples of this merger will be far-reaching, long-lasting, and impossible to contain,” the Block the Merger coalition said in a statement. “We are going to continue the fight.”

Bonta has also been accused of caving due to Ellison’s threat to move and pressure from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, the Democratic nominee in California’s gubernatorial race Xavier Becerra — a claim he “vehemently and respectfully disagrees” with and said had “no influence” on the states’ decision.

“My job is to focus on the antitrust concerns and getting a resolution. So what a company may or may not do, what a governor or a next governor says or doesn’t say, has no influence,” Bonta said. “I’m the attorney general of California. I need to make a decision about the case that I brought with my 11 other attorneys general, and if we get a resolution to that case, as we did when Paramount finally came to the table in good faith, then we take it and we resolve the case.”

He added that it was ultimately a “unanimous” decision for the states to settle the case, though Connecticut AG William Tong unsuccessfully pushed for Paramount-WBD to divest CNN and CBS News during negotiations.

When asked about the political opposition surrounding the deal, Delrahim accused the Block the Merger coalition’s Norm Eisen of using the campaign against the merger as a fundraising opportunity for himself. He also doubled down on previous remarks that some who opposed the merger were antisemitic.

But when asked if there would be any retaliation against creatives who opposed the merger, Delrahim said that would be “silly.”

“We’re in the business of storytelling. We’re in the business of fulfilling consumers’ demands, and you don’t do that,” he said.

What happens now?

With the settlement now approved, the next order of business is to officially close the merger. Ellison has said the deal would close within two weeks of reaching the settlement, putting the closing date in early October.

Paramount’s Class B stock listing is expected to move from the Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange on Oct. 5 and begin trading on the NYSE on Oct. 6. Paramount would distribute warrants to purchase those shares on Oct. 13.

However, the merger is “subject to further closing conditions, and the ultimate timing for the closing of the WBD merger, if any, is not yet certain,” the company noted in a Friday SEC filing. As a result, Paramount may choose to cancel or postpone the move.

While the deal isn’t officially closed, Ellison has already started shaking up the combined company’s leadership team, tapping HBO CEO Casey Bloys to run Paramount+ and HBO Max, with Paramount Streaming head Cindy Holland exiting on Tuesday. Paramount has also recruited Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz to serve as co-CEO of the combined company.

Shares of Paramount closed at $10.33 apiece, up 3.4% at the end of Wednesday’s trading session, while WBD shares finished at $30.95 per share, up 0.32%.

The post Paramount’s Makan Delrahim, California AG Rob Bonta Get Candid on Warner Bros. Merger Settlement appeared first on TheWrap.

The comment struck a chord because viewers have long suspected such a directive (just watch the final season of “Stranger Things), but Affleck, appearing at the Bloomberg Screentime conference on Wednesday night, set the record straight.

“I’ve never met anybody who’s had a note that idiotic and brazen,” Affleck said, arguing that he and Damon had tried to debunk that rumor on the podcast, only to have their words misconstrued as evidence of the practice. “There’s absolutely no truth to that.”

Netflix in March denied such a practice existed. “There’s no such principle,” film chairman Dan Lin said during a Netflix slate presentation to reporters. “If you watch our movies or TV shows, we don’t repeat our plot. So I don’t know where that comment came from … We actually all laughed when we watched that bit at the Oscars.”

Affleck noted that for his upcoming Netflix film “Animals,” which comes out Oct. 9, executives from the streamer service didn’t offer him any notes. But, even if a request like that had been made, Affleck said he wouldn’t make the change.

Embracing AI

One thing Affleck did use in the making of “Animals” was AI tools — specifically, ones created from his startup, InterPositive, which Netflix acquired for nearly $600 million. While at Bloomberg Screentime, Affleck broke down the process of building his own model specifically designed to help with cinematic shots, taking an open-source model and training it with thousands of hours of footage.

Affleck declined to specify which scenes utilized AI, saying he wanted to “foster the illusion of reality,” and providing glimpses into where the technology was employed was akin to a magician revealing his tricks before the performance. But he said “Animals” was a good example of the universal application of those AI tools because this was a more human-driven film with few splashy effects.

Affleck dismissed a conspiracy theory that Netflix bought InterPositive as a public relations shield protecting it from scrutiny over its broader use of AI. The thinking is that by allying with a respected filmmaker like Affleck and championing the use of ethical AI, it would distract Hollywood from its more aggressive use of the technology.

“What I can tell you is that in my experience, like in my ongoing capacity, one of the things about a company like Netflix is that they’re not really in a position to just sort of go ahead and do despicable things and alienate artists because they understand that they need to be in business with people,” he said. “And so, actually, I feel that they’ve even been as I’ve been part of all these conversations like, super judicious — whatever you want to do it’s totally up to you.”

Affleck also cast doubt that someone will make a fully AI-generated film, citing the complexity and expense of the effort.

“I think actually it may end up being bounded by the constraints of physics and energy before you reach a place where it could actually do that,” Affleck said. “I feel this is one of the least likely domains to be disintermediated by AI.”

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When asked about it during TheWrap’s 2026 TheGrill conference on Wednesday, Ellison’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim told Sharon Waxman it was “not a bluff,” but pushed back on calling it a threat and dismissed the role it may have played in turning the tide on a settlement.

“I don’t know if that factored into the state AG’s views. I don’t know for one way or the other, but it wasn’t a threat. It was not a bluff,” he said. “What’s great about competition and antitrust is that the states can compete for businesses in different states. You’ve had production going to New Jersey, New York, Georgia and they compete with California.”

Instead, he argued that the key to getting a settlement done was that the 12 states had no antitrust case. Delrahim said that their argument that Paramount-WBD would have a combined market share of 27% in the theatrical film market didn’t take Amazon MGM Studios, Lionsgate or A24 into account.

“Once you factor those in, that market share goes below 20%, and that’s assuming you take their time frame from 22 to 25 for that market share, which is based on box office revenues,” he said. “That’s just not how antitrust works. So once the facts were out before a judge, it would have never ever held up.”

“Every step of the way when you have a bad case, you’re making precedent, and as a former enforcer, it makes it more difficult for the future. So now, every time the state AGs bring a case, guess what the parties are going to do? They’re going to file the motion we filed,” he continued. “The state AGs, I think, realized there’s not a case here. Why are we doing this? And they realized that delay is not going to help anyone, which is why all the unions and everybody supported that.”

He also denied Bonta’s allegations that Paramount leaked the details of the negotiations in August, adding that what was reported was not accurate. After Bonta canceled a mediation meeting, Delrahim said that the circle of Paramount leadership involved in settlement talks narrowed to him and Ellison, as well as one attorney at Latham & Watkins who was not involved in the antitrust litigation.

After negotiating back and forth, the two sides would ultimately reach an agreement on the eve of Yom Kippur on Sept. 21 and announced the terms the following day. Delrahim said it was Ellison himself who got it over the finish line during the holiday.

“David was incredibly involved in this process himself with the staff. He and I would fly up, come down. He was personally invested and he is the single best client a lawyer can have because he’s incredibly genuine, he’s credible, and as a former producer and a guy who understands his business, he can speak with authority when asked these questions and allegations come up about different parts of the business,” he said. “It is incredible. You don’t even have to prepare because the truth actually is incredibly powerful.”

The settlement includes commitments to invest a minimum of $1.5 billion over five years in domestic TV and film production, release at least 30 films a year in theaters and negotiate the distribution agreements for each company’s suite of cable networks separately.

The combined company also must set up an independent editorial board to oversee the CNN and CBS News operations, continue to operate Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio lots for five years, honor collective bargaining agreements with Hollywood’s unions and make community investments, including a $5 million-per-year contribution to an independent film fund and $9.5 million annually for film and TV career training and development programs to benefit qualified educational institutions and community arts organizations.

Failure to comply with the various commitments in the settlement range from a $30 million penalty per film that misses the theatrical goal to forced divestitures of the company’s 49% Miramax stake within a 12-month period as well as BET, Comedy Central, VH1, Smithsonian, Destination America and Science Channel within a 120-day period.

Despite concerns that the settlement is “weak and unenforceable,” Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the agreement, calling it a “fair, reasonable, and good faith approach” to addressing the harms alleged in the AGs’ lawsuit.

In addition to unpacking how the deal got done, Delrahim addressed the politics surrounding the deal and the concerns around CNN’s independence.

“I understand people being concerned about somebody’s views that they may not like to have any access to any type of news,” he said. “But am I concerned that this issue is the cause for concern? No. Am I concerned that CNN, CBS News will somehow foreclose access to information? I don’t.”

He accused the Block the Merger coalition’s Norm Eisen of using the opposition against the merger as a fundraising campaign for himself. He also doubled down on previous remarks that some who opposed the merger were antisemitic.

When asked if there would be any retaliation against creatives who opposed the merger, Delrahim said that would be “silly.”

“We’re in the business of storytelling. We’re in the business of fulfilling consumers’ demands, and you don’t do that,” he said.

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