The Writers Guild of America is working to immediately block Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Early Wednesday morning, the union filed a motion seeking a preliminary injunction prohibiting Paramount and WBD from “consummating or consummating” the merger or “taking any steps to consolidate or consolidate their operations.”
Judge Araceli Martinez-Holguin on Monday issued a temporary restraining order blocking Paramount and Warner Bros. from completing the deal until at least August 3. The order came at the request of a coalition of 12 Democratic state attorneys general who argue the deal would hurt competition in the basic cable and theatrical distribution markets.
States, led by California, are also seeking preliminary injunctions that would halt the agreement indefinitely pending a trial on the merits of the case.
After states filed suit last week, the WGA filed its own lawsuit, arguing that the merger would also reduce screenwriters’ pay and hurt competition in three labor markets: blockbuster screenplays, episodic screenplays and overall screenwriter contracts.
The motion for an injunction includes statements from several top TV and film writers, including David Koepp, Adam McKay and Mike Schull, who say they have seen the effects of industry consolidation firsthand throughout their careers.
McKay and Cope talked about the script bidding wars that took place nearly 20 years ago, and said such fierce competition no longer exists. In 2001, Cope sold Panic Room to Sony after competition that included Universal and Paramount.
“If I were to put that same script on the market today, my options would be significantly reduced,” Cope wrote. “The world of studios is contracted to only a handful of companies that can produce compelling, star-driven films on healthy budgets.”
McKay also mentioned the bidding war between “Anchorman” and “Talladega Nights,” saying such competitions are a thing of a bygone era.
“This is because there are far fewer studios on the market today than there were in the early 2000s when I first started writing screenplays,” he wrote. “If I were to bring the same Anchorman script to market today, it would be highly unlikely that it would ever be produced…The studios that remain today are no longer independent creative entities; they are divisions of vast conglomerates whose political exposure and financial ties extend far beyond the entertainment industry.”
Schull described his attempt in 2017 to sell a TV show starring Aubrey Plaza as a therapist who is also a con artist. He said several streamers were open to the project, but faced pressure from their own studios to fund the project, and the deal fell through.
“I had never experienced anything like this before and it was a signal that something fundamental had broken in the market,” he wrote.
He also said the overall trading market has shrunk significantly in recent years.
“This is at least in part because the competitive pressures that once motivated studios to pay for exclusivity have been replaced by a market where the consolidation itself effectively already guarantees exclusivity, not because the value of the work offered by writers has diminished,” Schur writes.
The authors also noted Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox assets, arguing that Fox’s independent creative voice is inherently embedded in Disney’s corporate mandate.
WGA cases differ from state cases in that they focus on the labor market rather than the secondary market. In its motion for an injunction, the union cites the case of Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster, whose mergers were blocked because they would reduce advances for book authors.
“This logic applies here as well,” the union’s lawyers argue. “The proposed merger would reduce competition among buyers of film and television writing services, suppress writer compensation, erode contract terms, and reduce the amount and variety of programming delivered to audiences.”
Ultimately, the WGA argues, the agreement “threatens to create a cultural monolith and reduce the marketplace of ideas through corporate concentration.”
“When a handful of executives control which stories are funded, whose voices are platformed, and what programming reaches viewers, they exercise the kind of economic and cultural power that antitrust laws are designed to suppress,” the motion states.
Paramount claims the merger will be good for screenwriters because the combined company will produce more movies and TV shows. The companies also promised that their brands would continue to be under independent creative leadership.
