The Paramount–WBD legal battle: What happens next? | CNN Business

A legal battle over Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company, is underway. A coalition of 12 state attorneys general has filed an antitrust lawsuit and laid out their arguments; Paramount executives have pushed back hard, calling the suit “wrong on both the facts and the law.” Now the states are asking for a temporary restraining order — a TRO, for short — and a preliminary injunction to freeze Paramount in place. Here are some — partial, tentative, caveated! — answers to all the pressing questions about the deal. It’s in the proverbial end zone. Regulators all around the world have signed off on the deal or at least chosen not to stand in the way. Paramount is waiting on a few final approvals, including from the European Commission, which set a July 22 deadline for a decision. That’s next Wednesday, so Paramount CEO David Ellison is basically ready to take over WBD. The United Kingdom is also a wildcard. But this state lawsuit is the biggest impediment to the merger. That’s why the Los Angeles Times deemed this lawsuit a “last-ditch effort to derail a deal that would transform Hollywood.” The order would “make sure that the p