EXCLUSIVE: With the Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery merger hung up in a pending antitrust trial that’s set for March 2027, Regal Global Entertainment’s Eduardo Acuna, CEO of the No. 2 theater chain, is throwing his support behind the union of the two historic studios, saying tonight, “It is time for all parties to sit down and work out how to formalize these commitments.
“A long fight in court that extends into spring or summer doesn’t put more films in theaters, and is not beneficial to studios, filmmakers, the guests who go to the movies, or theater businesses like Regal and the people who work for them,” writes Acuna in a statement.
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“It just creates more uncertainty and distraction that could be damaging to our industry as we build on our current success,” adds the No. 2 circuit boss.
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This is the first time that Regal has made its support of a Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery merger public. Essentially the belief here is that a prolonged legal trial would cost Paramount hundreds of millions of dollars which would be better spent on movies. For Regal, the reason why Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery isn’t Disney-Fox 2.0 stems from the firm promises that Paramount CEO David Ellison is giving exhibition of at least 30 movies annually with a 45 day PVOD window and 90 days to SVOD for at least three years.
Says Acuna, “I believe David is sincere in making these commitments, and he has offered to execute a consent decree to the State AGs to that effect.”
With the 2026 year-to-date domestic box office at $6 billion plus-strong, at the best levels we’ve seen since 2019, throwing a monkey wrench into the pending Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery marriage is bad for business is the thinking of the top two global exhibitors, AMC and now Regal. Acuna follows No. 1 circuit Boss, AMC’s Adam Aron, who also publicly rallied around a Paramount-WBD merger in a July 29 Variety column, writing, “The AG’s lawsuit argues, in part, that this merger needs to be prevented to protect companies like mine. Well thanks, but no thanks. Their complaint simply gets the economics of our business backwards.”
Note the top two global circuits don’t see eye-to-eye on the merger with senior U.S. exhibitor trade org, Cinema United, whose CEO Michael O’Leary has been vehemently against Paramount’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, believing that a collapse of theatrical product and box office is imminent, just like what occurred with the Disney-Fox combo. Cinema United believes that the merger would be detrimental to exhibitors of all sizes. “We mutually committed to talking further to see if we could align on enforceable commitments that would allay our concerns about the merger,” O’Leary has written in a previous statement to Variety, “On July 1, after what Cinema United believed were additional constructive conversations with Paramount, we provided them with a comprehensive list of our concerns to move the discussions forward. We have not heard from them since.”
You can read Acuna’s full statement below:
This year has been an important one for our industry. Attendance is up, younger audiences are coming out in numbers we haven’t seen in years, and the upcoming release schedule looks just as strong. While there is real momentum, we need a thriving studio system to ensure that the industry has a platform from which to grow.
This is why, after much consideration, we believe it’s time for Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery to move forward. I’ve spoken directly with Skydance Paramount CEO David Ellison and his team about what a combined company would mean for exhibition, and he has made some specific commitments: at least 30 theatrical films a year, a protected theatrical window with 45 days for TVOD and 90 days for SVOD for a minimum of three years, and a $30 billion annual investment in media content. I believe David is sincere in making these commitments, and he has offered to execute a consent decree to the State AGs to that effect. These are tangible and important commitments that will benefit the industry and which can be measured.
A long fight in court that extends into spring or summer doesn’t put more films in theaters, and is not beneficial to studios, filmmakers, the guests who go to the movies, or theater businesses like Regal and the people who work for them. It just creates more uncertainty and distraction that could be damaging to our industry as we build on our current success. It is time for all parties to sit down and work out how to formalize these commitments. With these measures in place, we believe that Paramount can be an effective steward of these studios that mean an enormous amount to people who love movies.
While Cinemark hasn’t issued a statement of late in favor of the merger, the No. 3’s CEO and President Sean Gamble has been upbeat about the potential marriage, speaking in favor of it at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference 2026, saying, “Anything that leads to sustained or increased levels of investment in the number and scale of releases theatrically, that continue to have a robust theatrical window and comprehensive marketing campaigns is viewed as a positive for the industry. I think we’re hearing all the right things.”
Also shouting out their support of late for the merger is CEO of TKO Group Holdings, Ari Emanuel, who in a WSJ column called the antitrust lawsuit “trash,” arguing the merger “could save Hollywood”.
While there’s a division among creatives out there about the merger, with 4x Oscar nominated actor Mark Ruffalo leading an opposition letter, there are others such as Top Gun: Maverick producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who told us at the PGAs, he’s “optimistic” about the pending Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery merger and Ellison’s promise of 30 movies annually. “David loves movies. He’s gonna make a lot of movies. You just gotta give him good scripts.”
Bruckheimer further added in an appearance at April’s CinemaCon that when it came to the merger, “Look, I think the train has left the station. I think this is well on its way. You can sign all the petitions you want, but [the merger is] already being approved by European countries. It’s happening. So there’s not much we can do about it other than take [Paramount’s] David [Ellison] at his word that he’s going to make 30 movies [a year], and that would be fantastic.”
I like David. Increasingly, watching people in the business line up to support the deal feels bizarre. I wonder whether they understand it. I’d love to support it too, but unfortunately the math simply doesn’t work.
The proposed acquisition by Paramount of Warner Bros. Discovery is anti-competitive, will lay off thousands of workers, raise prices, and create a debt-laden behemoth forced to slash costs aggressively to have any hope of servicing that debt. In short, the math doesn’t work — for anybody.
The combined company would begin life carrying roughly $81 billion in debt while generating only $3 billion in annual free cash flow. The deal is being sold by David Ellison and David Zaslav as a necessary answer to the modern streaming era: more scale, larger libraries, broader distribution and stronger franchises as Star Trek and Top Gun meets Game of Thrones, Superman and Harry Potter.
But scale only works when it is built on a solid financial footing. Scale in this deal will devastate both studios. Here, rather than economies of scale, the opposite would arguably happen. The merger risks producing a company so burdened by debt that it becomes less able to invest in films, television, streaming, sports, output deals and creative talent than either company is on its own. The sole mission of the new company will be to service its debt.
Hollywood has already spent the last decade chasing consolidation. The results haven’t been stellar. When The Walt Disney Company acquired 21st Century Fox in 2019, Disney’s leverage rose to roughly 2.8 times EBITDA (lower is better). When Discovery, Inc. merged with WarnerMedia in 2021, leverage rose to about 4.3 times EBITDA. Both deals were heavily criticized as over-leveraged at the time. This proposed Paramount–Warner Bros. combination would begin at approximately 6.5 times EBITDA. That is an entirely different level of financial strain. Paramount recently said it plans to lower this to 3 times EBITDA by fiscal 2029, but that seems doubtful given the level of debt and lack of free cash flow.
The timing makes the situation even more concerning. Disney struck its deal when interest rates were low and capital was abundant. Discovery completed its transaction during an era of near-zero Treasury yields. Today’s environment is markedly different. Borrowing costs are materially higher, credit markets are tighter, and Paramount’s debt has already been downgraded by two of the three major rating agencies. The company has an enormous short-term bridge loan — approximately $49 billion — that will need to be refinanced in approximately 8 months. That creates a dangerous dependency. If financing conditions worsen, the company could have few options.
The cash demands are enormous. Annual interest expense alone could reach $5 billion–$6 billion on the $81 billion of debt. That’s nearly half of the company’s projected $12 billion EBITDA. Add another $3 billion–$5 billion annually for film and television production, $3 billion–$4 billion for streaming content and technology, and roughly $2 billion–$3 billion in merger integration expenses. I’m not even counting here the massive chunk that the NFL will take when it renegotiates its lucrative sports rights deal with Paramount.
And that is all before meaningful debt repayment, which will become a matter of life and death for the company.
As a result, before realizing savings and paying down principal, the company might not be able to service existing debt and might need to go the other way, borrowing more and more simply to maintain operations and make interest payments. A plausible path is debt rising from roughly $81 billion at closing to $85 billion – $87 billion within the first year, potentially exceeding $90 billion within three years, because they cannot pay down principal, and even higher if cost savings arrive slowly or operating conditions weaken. This is the media leverage trap: a company merges to gain scale, but the cost of carrying the debt absorbs the cash flow that scale was supposed to create.
The impact on the industry will be damaging. In a leveraged buyout like this, the first two steps are to fire people and raise prices. With the indebted companies combining, the immediate ramifications will be greater job losses across both studios.
When Disney closed its $71.3 billion acquisition of Fox, there were about $2 billion in synergies. Based on the financial models I’ve run, I’d estimate total job losses at around 14,000. Of those, 4,000 were direct employees and another 10,000-plus we’ll call indirect workers. Those are the people who support or work making films and television. Productions rely on these outside contractors and vendors, gig workers, security, caterers, carpenters, VFX houses, soundstage owners, below-the-line workers and more. The majority of these are blue-collar.
When Ellison’s Skydance closed on a deal for Shari Redstone’s Paramount Global last August, the companies projected $2 billion in synergies, including 2,000 to 3,500 direct job cuts. That number will increase as Skydance continues to downsize ahead of its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.
Paramount’s potential acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is projected in public filings to have around $6 billion in synergies. The financial models I’ve run project 10,000-plus direct employees at the companies and tens of thousands more indirect workers affected by the fallout of consolidation, again mostly blue-collar workers. And if it turns out that Ellison’s 30-movie-a-year pledge doesn’t work, and exhibitor chains lose product, the job reductions will only increase.
That projected $6 billion in synergies over three years from the Paramount acquisition of WBD is arguably unrealistic. In most leveraged buyouts, the acquirer doesn’t even reach half of the projected numbers. Savings of $6 billion are roughly equivalent to firing 10,000 low and mid-level workers.
Even if they somehow reached the $6 billion in synergies, it would not make a dent in their newly created debt problem. Again, the combined company would carry $81 billion in debt. To state the obvious, for a company the size of Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery, potentially cutting 10,000 employees itself is a massive number. That’s not “trimming.” That’s cutting deep into operating capacity, nor is it standard and customary cuts and job reduction. At that level, you’re not just lowering costs — you’re inevitably reshaping output, slate size, and how the company functions day to day.
Not only is this deal bad for the merging companies, but it creates broader problems for the industry as a whole. The traditional studio model already faces immense pressure from fragmented audiences, rising production costs, declining television economics, and an increasingly brutal streaming market. In that environment, balance-sheet flexibility matters more than ever. Companies need room to invest, experiment, absorb failures, and support long-term creative development.
This merger moves in the opposite direction. It would create a company where preserving the capital structure could become more important than investing in the product itself. Fewer films will be greenlit. Fewer creative risks will be taken. Mid-budget productions will disappear. Creative decisions will be replaced with financial calculations designed to maximize short-term cash generation rather than long-term franchise-building or artistic quality.
The result is worse for the consumer and worse for the economy.
When Disney acquired Fox, we went from six major studios to five. If the Paramount WBD transaction isn’t blocked, we would go effectively to four majors, because two of them would be controlled by a single owner. Do we realistically think they will compete with each other? Does going from six to four major studios foster competition, or is it blatantly anticompetitive? The answers are obvious.
Supporters of the deal describe it as a bold attempt to build scale for the streaming era. But scale financed by extreme leverage is not strength. It is fragility disguised as ambition. And when two heavily indebted media companies combine into one even more indebted company, we know how this movie ends: years of massive layoffs, restructuring, reduced production, higher prices for consumers, and financial retrenchment.
Gulf sovereign wealth funds recently pushed for significantly more attractive economics in exchange for providing needed capital, $24 billion. Now, with preferred pricing, caps on the price they pay, plus warrants provided as a sweetener, foreign sovereign wealth funds could end up owning approximately 50 percent of the two combined premier major studios and be the largest equity stakeholder.
What we’ll see if this deal goes through is fewer buyers for scripts. Fewer films greenlit. Less competition for talent (actors, directors, people). On the back end, a single company controlling a deeper library and two major streaming services — Paramount+ and HBO Max — can decide where titles go, how long they stay in theaters, and who else gets access.
There is an uncomfortable truth in this business that rarely gets said out loud: The company that controls distribution ultimately controls the market. I’ve watched more films succeed or fail in the margins of distribution strategy than in development rooms.
Greenlights matter. Budgets matter. But distribution — the ability to reach audiences at scale, on fair and open terms — is the oxygen of this industry. When a single company gains excessive leverage over theatrical booking, cable carriage, or streaming visibility, the system tilts. And once it tilts, it rarely tilts back.
Sometimes common sense and facts need to win over unrealistic hopes and promises. Everyone who loves our business needs to educate themselves on the transaction so they can make an informed decision. Following billionaires is easy. Taking a stand can be difficult and uncomfortable.
Joe
This merger is more than just putting movies into theaters (there will be negative consequences to TV / News — look at how poorly CBS is doing recently and then combine that wil CNN … bad idea). So the Regal CEO is short sighted in his comments (and clueless in his assessment). The Disney / Fox merger did NOT increase the number of movies that were released from these two studios combining into one company and the same will happen to WB / Paramount if allowed to merger.
What will he say when there’s not enough compelling content to power his business? His supplier, Paramount, hasn’t proven it can “get its weight up” with the studio they already control. His rationale makes zero sense. Should his stock and stakeholders be worried?
Do him or Adam Aron know that any projects at WB and Paramount are still being made since they’re operating? This is not putting any movies on hold.
I’ve never seen an industry where the employees put their politics above having a job and paying their bills. It’s the most self-destructive thing I’ve ever seen. Actors, writers, studio employees, journalists — unless you’re joining together to buy the studio, you do know that trying to hurt the Ellisons who own Paramount and, soon, Warners, will result in thousands of more layoffs, right? Your own unions don’t care about keeping you employed, and then you go out and alienate your employers? Make it make sense.
You do understand that your argument against the naysaying of this acquisition is that the Ellisons will be petty, right? If the Ellisons are that petty to put their own feelings and desire for revenge against the deal’s naysayers, then it would be indicative of their inability to separate their feelings from business.