California Attorney General Rob Bonta said Tuesday he remains willing to reengage with Paramount on settlement talks in the 12-state antitrust case blocking the company's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery — but only if Paramount can "put a lid on their lying leaks."
Bonta had initially agreed to meet with Paramount on Monday at the company's request, but he called off the meeting late Sunday night after news reports about the planned sit-down surfaced. "If they are willing to clean things up, put a lid on their lying leaks, and engage in a way that is sincere and in good faith, we will be… happy to meet," Bonta said. "But they need to take care of the problems and the leaks that they have on their team." He made the remarks Tuesday following a press conference on fentanyl and gun seizures at the attorney general's office in downtown Los Angeles.
Paramount has denied it was the source of the leaks. A company spokesperson said, "we remain hopeful and stand ready to continue good-faith discussions to resolve the Attorney Generals' suit inclusive of structural remedies to move forward with our transaction." The company has not detailed what structural remedies it might be willing to discuss. Paramount has also pledged to produce at least 30 films a year for the next three years, a commitment Bonta has repeatedly dismissed as an unenforceable "behavioral" promise rather than the "robust structural remedies" he says are required across three markets: basic cable distribution, wide-release theatrical distribution, and blockbuster film distribution.
Bonta accused Paramount of mischaracterizing the substance of the talks and violating the confidentiality expected in settlement negotiations. "That is amateur hour," he said. "That is playing games. We don't play games. You want to have a adult, legitimate, serious settlement discussion? No problem. You want to play games? We got better things to do."
The states currently have an agreement in place to keep blocking the merger at least until the trial next spring, by which point Paramount will have incurred roughly $1.3 billion in "ticking fees" owed to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders. Bonta said Paramount had pushed hard for the meetings. "They reached out," he said. "You know, some people use the word 'desperate,' but they really, really, really wanted to have these meetings. And then they messed it all up by the way they conducted themselves."
Bonta, who has faced pressure from industry stakeholders and California political leaders to reach a settlement, was asked Tuesday how likely it is that the case proceeds to trial. "You should ask Paramount," he said. He added: "We could be done tomorrow if they were willing to provide the robust structural remedies. If they're going to drag their feet and keep talking about 30 films and never talk about anything else, then we're going to trial."
Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
