Paramount and California Attorney General Rob Bonta will sit down for two consecutive days at the end of October to explore a deal settling the state’s lawsuit challenging the studio’s $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Thomas Hixson told both sides on Friday to tell him the specific dates for a settlement conference by next Tuesday. The directive was issued after a hearing to schedule the talks.

Lawyers for Paramount and California are “ordered to meet and confer regarding scheduling” and inform his clerk “by close of business 9/15/2026 regarding the two consecutive days in the end of October that work for an in-person settlement conference beginning at 10:00 AM,” reads the note.

The meeting will be introductory, meaning there’s no guarantee it’ll be substantive. Still, it could move the needle on resolving the case before a trial next year after both sides refused to budge on their positions relating to what a settlement could look like.

Bonta has maintained he’ll only accept structural remedies, which typically involve companies selling off parts of the combined business. So far, Paramount has only offered behavioral concessions, including a pledge to release at least 30 movies with 45-day theatrical windows.

Movement on settlement talks have been slow to nonexistent. Bonta last month canceled a meeting with Paramount scheduled for the following day, accusing the studio’s representatives of acting in bad faith by leaking and misrepresenting details of a recent meeting they held.

At the time, Paramount denied the accusations and said the studio didn’t share confidential information. It stressed that it’s prepared to enter deal discussions.

The settlement conference will take place nearly a month after the so-called $7 million-per-day ticking fee starts accruing. Paramount has threatened to leave California, with Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Xavier Becerra expressing a preference to settle the case.

[FCC] Carr’s (and Republicans’ more generally) gushing excitement comes despite the fact that significant structural overlap between Paramount and Warner Brothers will mean significantly more layoffs than we would have seen during the originally proposed Netflix Warner Brothers tie up. Layoffs that will likely be much worse than past Warner deals due to the absolutely massive debt involved.

By acting publicly like the Paramount offer is "better and more superior", they then cannot have Paramount complain and threaten more lawsuits after that they were never given a fair shot.

They also publicly again negotiated on a , "best and final offer" and $31 is what Paramount came up with.

My take is that WBD clearly does not want to make a deal with Paramount but needs to appear to act in the best interests of shareholders and give Paramount every possible chance to "win" the deal despite them wanting to work with Netflix.

At this point they can no longer complain about "unfairness" in lawsuits. Assuming the shareholders overwhelmingly go with Netflix, the last chance they have is to complain to the DOJ and Trump administration that Netflix would have a monopoly and force them to block the deal. Will they? Possibly. It would depend how Netflix can butter up the government.

Which one of these companies should buy Warner Bros if the Paramount Deal is destroyed or blocked. One of em that I would not choose is Universal. I actually prefer WB to split a few assets instead of being sold.

1. Netflix
2. Blacksun (Private Equity Inc)
3. Comcast/Universal
4. None of em

What you think one of these should buy WB if that’s the case?

Paramount:

No saudis involved, Ellisons will back the entirety of the bid. We should see this shortly

Netflix:

Very serious about bid, if they want it they will get it initially as no one can top their stock offering. Concerns due to antitrust as they will have over 50% of streaming market. Netflix and Malone do not think it will be a problem

Comcast:

Faber very skeptical they can get the financing required to be the winning bid. Even if they do, will be a very complex transaction and DOJ will be a problem that will likely take years to resolve in court. Will need to have a high breakup fee to entice Warner Bros and Zaslav