Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery Expect to Close Their $110 Billion Merger on October 6

Paramount Skydance Corporation and Warner Bros. Discovery said in a joint investor announcement on September 30, 2026 that their merger is expected to close on October 6, subject to customary closing conditions. The merger agreement is dated February 27, 2026 and names WBD, Paramount Skydance (NASDAQ: PSKY) and Prince Sub Inc. as the parties. If the deal closes on schedule, it would fold two of Hollywood's oldest studios under one owner.

Related reading: Microsoft Borrows $25 Billion as the AI Buildout Moves Onto the Bond Market · Amazon's AWS Grew 39% While Free Cash Flow Fell to -$42.4 Billion.

The transaction is valued at about $110 billion, which would make it the largest Hollywood consolidation in years. It is not done. At the time of writing the close is still pending: the companies have set a date, and they have not reported a finished deal.

What the deal pays

Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders would receive $31.00 in cash per share, plus a small daily accrual for each day after September 30. Should the deal close on October 6, the accrual brings the figure to about $31.0167 per share, the companies said. Reports on the total value have ranged from roughly $110 billion to $111 billion, so the round figure of about $110 billion is the safest description.

The cash price matters because it decides what WBD shareholders actually walk away with. The spread between the low and high estimates of the deal's value reflects different ways of counting assumed debt, the daily accrual and other adjustments. The per-share payment is the part a holder can point to directly.

A cash deal also ends WBD shareholders' stake in the business. They are not trading one set of shares for another. That distinction shapes who cares about integration: the people who own the stock are being paid out, while the people inside the studios are the ones who live with the result.

Two studios, two streamers, one owner

The combined business would bring together two major film and television studios with the streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max. Its networks would include CBS, CNN, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central and Food Network. Its franchises would include The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the DC Universe and Yellowstone.

On October 2, Paramount CEO David Ellison said the combined company will operate as Skydance, the name of the production company he founded. He described the change as a matter of the corporate entity, and said the Paramount and Warner Bros. brands would stay central to the business.

“We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one.” — David Ellison, Paramount CEO, October 2, 2026

That structure leaves the two studio brands intact while putting a third name on the parent company. The split is common when an acquirer wants the financial and legal entity to be distinct from the labels audiences recognize. Studio names carry decades of audience memory, and a merger does not transfer that memory to a new corporate name simply by printing it on filings.

What sharing one owner does to the two streaming services is less settled. Selling HBO Max and Paramount+ together could make the pair cheaper than subscribing to each on its own, and it could also make leaving the bundle more expensive. Neither company has published the subscriber numbers or the bundle terms that would answer it, so those remain open questions.

How the deal got here

The path to a signed agreement was contested. Netflix had agreed to acquire Warner Bros.' streaming and studio businesses before the broader Paramount deal moved forward, a sequence TechCrunch traced in a timeline published on July 21. The earlier Netflix agreement shows how sought-after Warner Bros.' assets were, and why the final structure took months of negotiation to settle.

Federal review was one front. Twelve states challenged the deal, arguing it could reduce competition and harm consumers and workers, TechCrunch reported on July 13. During the final week of September, a judge approved a settlement with the state attorneys general, according to reports around October 1 and 2. Variety had noted in late September that the close was not yet certain, a fair summary of a deal whose conditions were still being worked through.

The reported settlement cleared a major remaining hurdle before the expected close, although its detailed terms have not been laid out publicly. That leaves an unusual position: the competition questions the states raised are settled as far as the court is concerned, but the commitments behind the settlement are not something a reader can check line by line.

Leadership moves point to the integration ahead

The first concrete integration decisions emerged on October 4. Warner Bros. Motion Picture chiefs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are not moving to the combined company; their contracts were rejected by the new owner, Paramount, Deadline reported. Skydance also plans to place all three television studios, Warner Bros. Television, CBS Studios and PTVS, under George Cheeks, per Deadline. And the combined company will keep both the HBO Max and Paramount+ streaming brands, Deadline reported.

Those choices say something about where the overlap will land. Keeping both streaming brands avoids an immediate subscriber migration, but it also means running two platforms, two content pipelines and two marketing organizations under one corporate roof for now. Putting three TV studios under a single leader concentrates decisions about which shows get made and where they air.

The logic behind the tie-up

The merger rests on a familiar argument: that owning more content and more distribution at once makes a media company stronger against larger rivals. Both Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery spent the past several years building streaming services to compete with Netflix, and both carried the costs that came with them. Combining the libraries, the studios and the networks is a way to spread those costs over more titles and more subscribers than either company could reach alone.

The library is the main asset behind that argument. The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the DC Universe and Yellowstone are franchises that can be remade, spun off and licensed across film, television and streaming. A single owner can decide where each one appears rather than negotiating with a partner, and it can hold a franchise back from rivals. That control is worth more when audiences are spread across several subscription services and attention is harder to hold.

What consolidation usually means

Deals at this scale are usually justified with cost savings. In media, the recurring savings come from combining overlapping functions: distribution, advertising sales, corporate overhead and the streaming technology that runs two services. The companies have not published a layoff figure, so the size of any job reduction is unknown. What is visible is the shape of the overlap, and the leadership changes on October 4 began to reveal it.

Workers tend to feel that overlap first. Two film studios with separate development, production and marketing teams create obvious duplication once they share an owner, and the treatment of the Warner Bros. film chiefs shows how quickly those decisions can arrive. Any estimate of layoffs beyond the reported exits would be speculation.

For subscribers, the relevant question is bundling. Two major streaming services under one owner could be sold together, which might lower the combined price while raising the cost of leaving. For theaters and independent producers, fewer studio buyers can mean less competition for projects and less choice about where to take them.

There is also the programming side. A single owner controlling CBS, CNN, MTV and a set of film franchises has more bargaining power in carriage negotiations with distributors, and more ability to route a show toward the platform it favors. That concentration is exactly what the state challenge was about, and the settlement is the mechanism meant to address it.

Caveats

Three points belong beside this story.

First, the deal is expected, not done. Every description of the combined company here is conditional on the close, which the parties have scheduled for October 6.

Second, the state settlement is reported. A judge approved it during the week of September 28, according to coverage, but the specific commitments have not been spelled out in the sources reviewed here.

Third, the value varies by report. The spread between roughly $110 billion and $111 billion reflects different ways of counting debt and the daily accrual. The per-share cash figure, $31.00 plus accrual, is the more precise number.

For context on the old regime, Warner Bros.' final release before the expected close, Tom Cruise's “Digger,” opened on October 2 to a weak estimated $8 million domestically. It is a separate story and is covered elsewhere on the site.

What to watch

• The closing date. Whether the deal closes on October 6, or the conditions push it later, is the first thing to check.
• Integration decisions. More leadership appointments will show which divisions are treated as overlapping and which are kept separate.
• Streaming bundling. Whether HBO Max and Paramount+ are sold together, and at what price, will affect subscribers directly.
• Content pipeline. How the combined studio allocates film and TV projects across its franchises will shape what reaches theaters and streaming.
• Employment. The companies have not disclosed a layoff target, so any workforce numbers that surface during integration will be new information.

The deal would join two storied studios, two streaming services and a string of cable networks under one corporate name. The parties expect the close on October 6.

Cover: The Paramount Pictures studio gate on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. Photo by Coolcaesar via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.