Paramount wins European regulators' blessing to buy Warner Bros. Discovery

This is read by an automated voice.Please report any issues or inconsistencies here.

See more from the L.A.Times in Google Search.

Set us as preferred Paramount Skydance has notched a needed win as it continues to pursue its $111-billion deal to buy Warner Bros.Discovery.On Wednesday, the European Commission gave its consent, allowing tech scion David Ellison’s industry-reshaping merger to move forward in the countries that make up the European Union.

European regulators added just one condition: Paramount must end a partnership with Universal Pictures to share distribution of movies in Europe.Beyond that, regulators concluded that even with the proposed Paramount-Warner consolidation there was plenty of other studios making movies to avoid competitive harms.“The Commission found that, at film production level, enough film studios remain as competitors,” the European Commission said in a statement.

“These include other major US studios like Disney, NBC Universal ...and Sony, along with smaller US studios such as Amazon MGM, A24 and Lionsgate, as well as European studios.”But the merger would result in a “high concentration” of film distribution, the commission said, so Paramount would have a year to end its joint venture, United International Pictures, which distributes Paramount and Universal films to cinema owners in Europe.

Adding Warner Bros.would give that firm too much heft, the commission said.Paramount must not “directly or indirectly ...

enter into any agreement or understanding with Universal to jointly co-distribute films” in the European countries for 10 years, the commission said.Despite early concerns about dominance in the children’s television market, Paramount will not be required to divest Cartoon Network, a Warner asset, because of its ownership of Nickelodeon.“The Commission found that streaming platforms offering children’s content will continue to act as a competitive constraint on the merged entity’s TV ...