Merger officially scheduled as judge approves Warner Bros./Paramount settlement

This is good news for David Ellison, but not for many others, both inside and outside of the company. The merger, which Variety reminds is the most expensive ever completed in the entertainment business, creates a whole lot of debt for Paramount; the company is now reportedly looking to Elon Musk for some cash. We can’t imagine that will be especially beneficial for the content the mega-streamer will produce—Musk bankrolling CNN certainly isn’t a great thought—and it almost certainly won’t be good for the employees who will be rendered redundant by the merger. Even someone as high-ranking as Cindy Holland, Paramount’s head of streaming, has gotten the boot since Warner Bros. already has someone to do the job with Casey Bloys. That’s to say nothing of the general media consolidation and the fact that one extremely wealthy family is about to control even more of the media ecosystem. 

Still, the judge found that the settlement “reflects a procedurally sound resolution.” Paramount did make a few concessions to get to this point, but they still won’t solve all of these other issues. The judge’s decision is also unlikely to please any of the merger’s very vocal critics; as Mark Ruffalo said yesterday, “This merger will stifle creativity, weaken free speech and cost people their jobs — it is a bad deal for this country and should never have been approved.”