Editors’ Note: On July 13, California, New York & 10 other states sued to stop Paramount Skydance’s planned $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery. Last week a federal judge dealt the David Ellison-run Paramount a blow by setting the much anticipated antitrust action for a two-week trial in March 2027. Amidst recent ParaBros merger endorsements from TKO boss Ari Emanuel, former cable news anchor Chris Wallace (both of whom have deep financial connects to Paramount) and exhibitor executives, plus a CNN centric NYT op-ed from Ellison himself, big screen release pledges, and more, Golden State Attorney General Rob Bonta has become Public Enemy #1 for Paramount & WBD. In an exclusive guest column for Deadline, AG Bonta today warns Hollywood & others not to be distracted from the facts of the states’ case, & the fate of the deal.

EXCLUSIVE: Despite the spin you may have heard in recent weeks, the lawsuit my colleagues and I filed challenging the Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery merger isn’t about trusting the intentions of one company or one man.

It isn’t about trusting that CBS News and CNN will remain independent and credible under one umbrella.

It isn’t about the future of streaming.

This lawsuit is about antitrust law. It is a straight up antitrust enforcement case. One that is very cut and dry. One that seeks to prevent the long-term structural impact from the loss of competition. An impact that can’t be remedied with a few one-off, piecemeal promises.

So, while others may try to flip the script and distract from the facts, I will lay out the truth of this case.

The proposed merger — the largest in Hollywood history — would combine two Hollywood titans and create an illegal level of concentration in three markets: film distribution for wide release films, anticipated blockbuster film distribution, and cable TV.The resulting behemoth would control nearly one-third of theatrical motion picture distribution and nearly one-third of basic cable channels, including 50 of the most popular cable channels.

It would be particularly harmful to the market for anticipated top-grossing films, also known as anticipated blockbusters, such as Mission: Impossible—the Final Reckoning and A Minecraft Movie. The merger would give just four distributors control of more than 90% of these films. That is a big deal, because blockbusters have massive production budgets and account for 88% of box office revenue for films released over the past four years. These films get more people out of their homes and to the movie theater, reminding them of why they love going to the movies in the first place.

Let’s talk about why all of this matters.

Concentration in these markets would mean less competition. Less competition will ultimately result in higher prices, lower content quality, and fewer movies and TV shows. Movie theaters, cable TV distributors, and audiences on every sofa and in every movie seat in the U.S. would feel the impact of this unlawful merger.

Take, for example, Warner Bros.’s Minecraft and Paramount Skydance’s latest Mission: Impossible, which were released in April and May last year. If the two companies had already merged, would they have released these megahits back-to-back, or would they have pushed one out? Would they both receive massive marketing budgets, or would one take a back seat? Would the production budgets for each have stayed the same, or would one have been cut down? We can’t know the answers, but these are the kinds of concerning questions with industry-wide impacts that our lawsuit intends to prevent.

Competition is core to a thriving economy.

It incentivizes companies to produce their best work, to offer fair prices, and to ensure that companies succeed based on what they offer, not what backdoor deals they can land, connections they can lean on, or because they’ve unlawfully manipulated the market and trampled over competitors leaving consumers with just one unsatisfying option.

When companies scheme to cut competition, costs go up, choices go down, our economy suffers, and every day Americans end up paying more for less. That’s why we have antitrust laws like the Clayton Act. A law that this proposed merger violates.

Right now, Paramount and Warner Bros. are spearheading a public relations campaign to spin a narrative that is simply false.

They would have you believe that this is purely politics. It’s not. If it was, we would have been thrown out of court the day we filed. Instead, the judge reviewed our case, saw the merits of our arguments, and issued a temporary restraining order to block the merger. If this was about politics, Paramount and Warner Bros. would not have agreed to pause the merger until a judge makes a final decision or until next June, rather than go through preliminary injunction hearings that were likely to go the same way as the temporary restraining order — in our favor.

Paramount and Warner Bros. see the writing on the wall: that they will lose in a court of law. So instead, they are resorting to the court of public opinion. They want to talk about anything but the facts of this case. To twist the narrative. To try to confuse, conflate, and convince you that this is about politics, the news, or the future of streaming, when they know perfectly well it is not. When our lawsuit makes it crystal clear that it is not. As disingenuous as it may be, they are welcome to do so.

In the meantime, we will be telling the truth and fighting our case — fighting for American audiences, filmmakers, writers, creatives, production crews, and small businesses — in an actual court.

And we intend to win.

EXCLUSIVE: AI firm Promise, whose backers include Peter Chernin and Google, is developing a psychological horror feature film based on the “dead internet theory.”

Dave Clark, a noted AI creator and filmmaker as well as Promise’s chief creative officer, is directing the project, which is titled Touch Grass. Backrooms executive producer Chris White and Bloody Disgusting founder Brad Miska are aboard as producers.

Backrooms has vividly illustrated the vast potential of mining grassroots genre material. The film, which has taken in $395 million at the global box office, has its origins as a property on 4chan and later blossomed on YouTube and TikTok before becoming the top-grossing title ever released by A24. Chernin became a producer of Backrooms after White helped bring the online videos made by visual effects artist Kane Parsons to wider attention. Atomic Monster also was a producer of Backrooms.

Touch Grass is not acquired IP. It is based on Clark’s original idea, which he brought to White and Miska. It explores the dead internet theory is a once-obscure belief that the internet is controlled by bots, AI content and fake personalities. The theory was developed several years ago but has gained legitimacy as AI has achieved greater scale and prominence in industry and society.

Per Promise’s logline, the film follows a young woman who designs AI personalities for a mysterious tech company . When she discovers a hidden world beneath the internet known as The Feed, she uncovers a terrifying secret: copies of people are being built from their deepest desires.

While Promise specializes in AI, it has also emphasized practical locations and virtual production in its work. Touch Grass will be produced via a hybrid production model that combines live-action actor performances, practical effects, traditional visual effects, and generative AI.

Miska will produce on behalf of Be Afraid Media, the horror media company behind Dread Central. He previously founded the influential genre brand Bloody Disgusting and co-developed the hit found-footage franchise V/H/S. Miska has helped bring more than 100 horror films to the screen, and the effectiveness of Bloody Disgusting’s imprimatur and community was driven home by the runaway success of the Terrifier franchise. Terrifier 3, released by Bloody Disgusting’s current parent company Cineverse, grossed $90 million worldwide in 2024, a huge multiple of its seven-figure production budget.

Clark is an award-winning filmmaker oversees the studio’s film and television slate alongside fellow Promise co-founders George Strompolos and Jamie Byrne. All three are executive producers of Touch Grass.

The film “taps into the fear that we can no longer trust what is real,” Clark said in a statement. “We leave behind digital versions of ourselves every day through our searches, conversations, and behavior online. This timely story asks what happens when those fragments become something far more powerful and dangerous.”

White said horror at its best “takes familiar ideas and pushes them just beyond the edge of plausibility. Touch Grass explores one of the defining technologies of our time through a story that’s both thought-provoking and deeply unsettling.”

Miska said, “Original horror thrives on fresh mythology and timely ideas. Touch Grass combines both, creating a psychological thriller that feels uniquely of this moment.”

EXCLUSIVE: Misfit janitors in a mysterious research facility are the subject of Doomsweepers, an animated comedy-horror series out of Australia.

Monkie Kid series director Sarah Harper has created the “horror-action-comedy” show with Sydney 2D animation studio Flying Bark onboard as producer. Also attached are Lightfold, Olan Rogers’ comics and animation studio aimed at creators. We can reveal today that L.A. publishing house Gungnir has also boarded the project.

A crowdfunder round held in collaboration with Lightfold has launched to raise further financing. A first-look trailer has dropped on YouTube to support the raise. You can see that above.

Last week, Flying Bark and Lightfold dropped a teaser for the project, but no key details were dropped at the time. We’ve now got word on the fun-looking antics it could provide.

Here’s the Doomsweepers synopsis: “Set in a mysterious research facility, Doomsweepers follows a team of misfit janitors who go from cleaning the staff room one day, to saving the world the next, and in doing so they unravel the facility’s best kept secret.”

Producers say the “candy-coloured art direction brings a unique, vibrant energy to the show that provides a visual point of difference from traditional dark, dystopian, apocalyptic content.”

Flying Bark is a 2D animation specialist based in Australia, with studio locations in Sydney, L.A. and Madrid. Recent productions include Netflix’s Stranger Things: Tales From ’85, Paramount’s Avatar Aang: The Last Airbender and original series Shaun Tan’s Tales from Outer Suburbia.

Lightfold, meanwhile, launched in 2023 to develop animated projects that have a direct connection to fans. Final Space creator Rogers and producer Forrester Kane created the biz, with the former’s crowdfunded animation pilot Godspeed its debut project. It launched on YouTube three years ago and has received more than 2.2 million views. 

Gungnir is known primarily as a counter-culture comics publisher, but has struck a series of deals to develop properties as TV shows and films, and vice-versa. In December 2025, it launched Gungnir Animation Studio to become “the Cartoon Network of the digital era.”

Harper – a writer, director and showrunner known for work on Lego’s Monkie Kid franchise and Nickelodeon’s Glitch Techs and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – developed the “deeply personal project inspired by unsung heroes.”

She added: “The idea for Doomsweepers was born in 2019, when Australia was battling catastrophic bushfires, only to be hit by a global pandemic soon after. In those moments of uncertainty, I found myself drawn to the stories of everyday people who stepped up when it mattered most. 

“The Doomsweepers aren’t your typical heroes: they’re janitors in a tech facility, overlooked and underestimated. But when chaos erupts, they rise to the occasion, proving that courage can come from the most unexpected places.”

Here are a further selection of images.