Commentary: An 'independent' study takes Paramount's side in its merger battle. But Paramount paid for it

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Set us as preferred You might have heard that Paramount-Skydance’s proposed $111-billion acquisition of Warner Bros.Discovery will be a boon for the Southern California film industry.

Or that, if it doesn’t come off, the damage to the local economy will be epic.Or that, even if it does happen, that might not be good for the economy.In that respect, like many other merger battles, this one has been producing more murk than light.

The deal is currently on hold, thanks largely to a lawsuit to block it filed by California and 11 other states.U.S.

District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of Oakland has scheduled a trial for March 2.But Paramount faces a tighter deadline — if the deal is not closed by Oct.

1, it will owe approximately $7 million per day of delay to Warner shareholders as a “ticking fee.” California Atty.Gen.

Rob Bonta says he’s willing to negotiate with Paramount over concessions that would prompt him to drop the lawsuit.But he has been irked at what he says is Paramount’s under-the-table maneuvering.Meanwhile, conjectures about the impact of a deal or non-deal have proliferated.

The most recent comes from an organization that presents itself as the producer of sober, professional economic analysis.That’s the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit affiliated with the county, which says that completing the merger would produce as much as $1.01 billion in economic growth for the state over the next five years, but that the deal’s collapse would cost the state as much as $21.2 billion a year into the limitless future.Those figures come from a draft LAEDC report leaked to Politico.

What the draft doesn’t mention is that the report was commissioned by Paramount.Obviously, that makes its conclusions suspect.

But it also makes the LAEDC complicit in muddying the waters about t...