They’re Talking! Paramount & AGs Settlement Talks Set For Next Month; Bonta Downplays Significance As “Standard Course”

Paramount Skydance and the coalition of a dozen state Attorneys General fighting to stop David Ellison‘s $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery will be having settlement talks after all.

Well, settlement-ish talks

Under the routine procedure of the federal court system, a judge in Oakland today instructed the battling parties to sit down together for “two consecutive days in the end of October”

The ” in-person settlement conference” is scheduled to start at 10 am PT in a month and a half, per Magistrate Judge Thomas S. Hixson.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that a Paramount disputed antitrust trial is still set to start on March 2, 2027. In fact, none of this means much at all unless Team Para, WBD and the AGs led by California’s Rob Bonta actually want to put their swords down and strike a deal, “structural remedies” and all.

To that, Bonta’s office Friday bluntly told Deadline: . “A court-ordered settlement conference means the judge required both sides to meet, but it does not indicate a settlement is in progress. This is standard course in a case of this magnitude.”