Paramount finally is getting serious in its standoff with blue state attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America over the antitrust action aimed at shattering David Ellison‘s $111 billion deal to meld Warner Bros Discovery with the home of The Godfather.

In the deepest sense of an offer they can’t refuse, make that $1.88 billion serious.

Following widely mocked leaked threats to leave California if there’s no significant settlement talks with the dug-in AGs and the scribes guild, Paramount’s legion of lawyers filed paperwork Monday seeking a $1.88 billion bond from the plaintiffs. If coughed up, the bond would help cover large swaths of the $7 million-a-day ticking fee Paramount Skydance is obliged to pay to WBD shareholders starting in a few weeks, plus other costs baked into the ParaBros agreement.

“Now that trial is scheduled for March 2027, roughly four months after the trial date proposed by Defendants, and more than half a year from now, Paramount seeks the bond to which it is statutorily entitled, the motion staes. “Each day that passes after September 30th without the merger closing, Paramount must pay roughly $7 million in ‘ticking fees’ to Warner Bros. stockholders and yet more fees to its financing sources for maintaining their commitments, and it is forestalled from realizing technology and marketing synergies, among many other transaction benefits.”

Leaning into the cost of the judicial process on corporate reality, the filing adds: “By the time trial concludes and the parties submit their final briefs, Paramount will have paid Warner Bros. shareholders an unrecoverable $1.3 billion in ticking fees alone. Delay also threatens to nullify the regulatory approvals that Defendants have already spent months securing. If the transaction remains unclosed by the end of trial, Defendants will have to take additional steps to obtain regulatory approval, once again at substantial expense. Absent security, even a complete victory on the merits would not restore a dollar of those extraordinary losses.”

“That is precisely why federal law requires plaintiffs to provide security as a condition for receiving preliminary relief such as the court-approved order.”

RELATED: Paramount CEO David Ellison Complains About “Needless Costs” Of State AGs’ Antitrust Suit As Mexico Approves Merger

Outside of court, Paramount pressed it’s perspective.

“Both the Clayton Act, the federal antitrust law upon which these suits are based, and other federal law expressly provide that plaintiffs are required to post a bond covering the potential harm from halting a transaction to litigate, so that if they lose, the injured party has a source of recovery for the damage caused,” a Paramount spokesperson told Deadline on Monday as the bond request was filed in federal court. “Here, every month of delay carries substantial and quantifiable financial consequences.”

With a March 2 trial start date on the books in front of an Oakland-based Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, Paramount could be in hock to the tune of around $1.3 billion once the parties face off.

RELATED: California AG Rob Bonta Open To Structural Remedies In Paramount-WBD Suit But Calls 30 Movies A Year An “Old, Stale Promise”

To that, even as Martínez-Olguín has signaled then that she was not sympathetic to Paramount’s arguments of economic harm if the merger is blocked beyond September 30, Team Ellison offered its rational for the big ask today.

“Paramount is seeking a bond based on the straightforward calculation of the maximum potential ticking consideration and financing costs from this litigation,” the company spokesperson added. “But these are not the only costs of delay. By virtue of what will be at least an eight-month delay in closing, there will be no integration and no ramped-up investment in content, production and creative talent by the combined company. Of course, in addition, employees of both Paramount and WBD are also harmed by the uncertainties caused by the delay.” 

RELATED: Paramount Making Deals To Theaters For 30 Films A Year Post-WBD Acquisition; Cinema United Still Anti-Merger

That aside, a bond is meant to cover costs to the defendants in the course of the litigation and granting one is at the discretion of the judge in the case. In the AG’s case against Para-WBD, she explicitly waived that security requirement, because, she wrote in a ruling granting a temporary restraining order on closing the merger, “Plaintiffs have demonstrated that Plaintiff States bring suit to enforce important public interests.”

The big boy pants bond move also comes after weeks of Paramount self-sabotage with an ineffective Ellison NYT op-ed, self-interested executive elite endorsements, planted stories about Gavin Newsom‘s POV, plus vague promises of theatrical releases, deal concessions and settlement trial balloons.

Goading California’s Rob Bonta, New York’s Letitia James and other AGs with lists of the nearly 70 countries and jurisdictions like Donald Trump‘s DOJ, the UK, the E.U., Canada, and last week Mexico that have signed off on the merger, Paramount has found friends in Christopher Nolan’s DGA and Matt Loeb’s IATASE. In the transaction backed by Big Daddy and Oracle founder Larry Ellison, David Ellison and his execs have also found themselves at the receiving end of sharp rebukes from the WGA (who joined their own suit to the AGs’ one) and Hollywood’s powerful Teamsters’ local.

Putting some more real money on the table, PSKY shares are down 24% year to date as the merger stalls and the deal hasn’t closed. More anxiety is festers as the frozen situation leaves unanswered questions of layoffs and more for the $80 billion debt a combo ParaBros will carry if the two iconic companies even do become one.

Jill Goldsmith contributed to this report

Read the Paramount Skydance’s full statement on the $1.88 billion bond request here:

“Today, Paramount requested that the court enforce the statutory requirement that the plaintiffs post a bond in connection with their pending litigation, which blocks us from closing our merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. We have satisfied all closing conditions under our merger agreement, having received regulatory clearances from 68 jurisdictions. These two lawsuits are the only barrier to closing this transaction. 

Both the Clayton Act, the federal antitrust law upon which these suits are based, and other federal law expressly provide that plaintiffs are required to post a bond covering the potential harm from halting a transaction to litigate, so that if they lose, the injured party has a source of recovery for the damage caused. Here, every month of delay carries substantial and quantifiable financial consequences.

Paramount is seeking a bond based on the straightforward calculation of the maximum potential ticking consideration and financing costs from this litigation. But these are not the only costs of delay. By virtue of what will be at least an eight-month delay in closing, there will be no integration and no ramped-up investment in content, production, and creative talent by the combined company. Of course, in addition, employees of both Paramount and WBD are also harmed by the uncertainties caused by the delay. 
 
Against the overwhelming legal and regulatory consensus of independent competition authorities around the world representing 68 jurisdictions, California and the other 11 state attorneys general have chosen to erect a roadblock at the last second that harms two media companies whose combination would enable increased competition to benefit consumers, creators, and workers, while also strengthening Hollywood.
We remain confident that plaintiffs’ case is without merit and will defend our pro-competitive transaction in court. We look forward to closing this transaction and delivering its benefits to consumers and entertainment industry workers in California, the United States and around the world.”

EXCLUSIVE: Jordan (Michael Evans Behling), Layla (Greta Onieogou) and the rest of the Vortex are helping to pick up the pieces in Monday night’s episode of All American.

Deadline can share the above clip exclusively ahead of the episode, featuring the OG members of the Vortex presumably in the hours after both Amina (Alexis Chikaeze) and Preach (Kareem Grimes) were arrested by ICE agents while protecting students and faculty during a raid on South Crenshaw High School. In the clip, Jordan shows up to their home, where Layla waits with Coop (Bre-Z) and Breonna (Sasha Lance), with a box of doughnuts in tow.

“Doughnuts have a way of de-stressing even the worst situations,” he earnestly tells Layla when she questions the gesture.

It might’ve worked, if he hadn’t had to drop the news on Layla that KJ (Nathaniel McIntyre) is also missing after taking off in the middle of a fight between Cassius (Osy Ikhile) and Jordan.

Looks like they’ve got their hands full in this upcoming episode. Watch the full clip above.

Focusing on the three pillars that have always been at the heart of All American – football, family and friendship – Season 8 picks up six months after the football cliffhanger at the end of last season and will span just one week in our favorite Beverly and Crenshaw crew’s life. A week that will have them wondering if everything they’ve been through over the course of their lives has prepared them for this moment. A week that will ultimately reunite old with the new, friend with enemy, and alter the course of each of their futures forever. 

The series stars Michael Evans Behling, Greta Onieogou, Bre-Z, Osy Ikhile, Alexis Chikaeze, Nathaniel Logan McIntyre, Antonio J. Bell, Kareem Grimes, and Lauryn Hardy.

All American is produced by Warner Bros. Television and CBS Studios in association with Berlanti Productions, with executive producers Nkechi Okoro Carroll (“Found,” “The Resident”), Greg Berlanti (“You,” “Brilliant Minds,” “The Flash”), Jameal Turner (“Rosewood”), Sarah Schechter (“The Flight Attendant,” “Riverdale,” “You”), and David Strauss (“One Tree Hill”).

Jimmy Fallon has spent most of the summer as the sole torchbearer for late-night on broadcast television.

The Tonight Show host has been palling around with Katseye, trying on QVC wigs, starting his own microdrama, interviewing almost everyone involved in The Odyssey and making fun of the President.

He has, essentially, held down the fort of late-night all by himself. Jimmy Kimmel has been on his annual summer holiday and Seth Meyers has been largely off since the middle of June and will return at the end of September. Stephen Colbert, of course, is off writing a Lord of the Rings movie after being unceremoniously axed by CBS.

Meyers was off between June 18 and July 13, returning for two weeks before departing on July 30 and will eventually be back on September 21. This is much longer than recent breaks; last year he was off between July 18 and August 12 as well as the last week of August and in 2024 he was off the last two weeks of August (although admittedly it was an election year, which may have played into things).

“We got a break coming up. I wish we didn’t. We like being here with you guys, but we’ll be back, we’ll be refreshed,” he said on an episode of his YouTube series Corrections.

“We’re about to take a very long hiatus and when we take very long hiatuses, one of the things that people say is that we’re going to miss so much. Because of that, we, through back channels, reached out to the White House and he agreed he’s not going to be weird. Until we get back,” he joked.

Kimmel has been taking the summers off since 2020, having baked in the idea to his contract with ABC. His show has been guest hosted by the likes of Anthony Anderson, Colman Domingo, Ike Barinholtz and Tiffany Haddish with Rosie O’Donnell filling his seat this week.

This long summer break is also interesting given that it coincides with Emmy voting season. Only John Oliver is on air this week as voting starts tomorrow so voters won’t be swayed by the latest monologue from Kimmel or Stewart as they choose who will win Outstanding Variety Series (although given the current rules, all five nominees – The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Last Week Tonight, The Late Show and Saturday Night Live – could win an award in September).

Late-night hosts taking time off during the doldrums of summer is not a concern, in itself, but this year’s broadcast line-up feels like a harbinger. Many believe that the storied Tonight Show will be the last late-night franchise on air – Fallon is currently signed up to host through 2028, much like Meyers – but the cancelation of The Late Show, CBS deciding to move away from late-night altogether and the likelihood of Kimmel leaving sooner rather than later makes it feel like a sign of things to come.

The fact that Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver only signed up for a one-year deal, rather than his traditional three years, is also a worry, although that says more about the state of his employer, Warner Bros. Discovery, which is in a complicated corporate takeover situation, than the state of late-night comedy.

Yes, there’s still The Daily Show but the Comedy Central show is itself is on a longer hiatus than last year, essentially taking all of August off, returning on September 8, and Andy Cohen’s Bravo talker Watch What Happens Live is still a thriving spot for reality gossip.

Ad spending on linear late-night shows is clearly continuing to fall; ad intelligence agency Guideline noted that spend went from $439M in 2018 to $221M in 2024.

The narrative is that late-night is being replaced by YouTube shows.

Trevor Noah and Conan O’Brien are prospering with the former Daily Show host having nearly 5M subscribers on the Google-owned platform and the former Tonight Show has nearly 10M subs for his Team Coco channel.

But the new breed of “late-night” shows on YouTube such as Julian Shapiro Barnum’s Outside Tonight and Ben Gleib’s Good Night are struggling to break through. Some of Barnum’s Outside Tonight episodes are receiving hundreds thousand viewers, but the channel has fewer than 8,000 subscribers, while many clips of Good Night get only a few hundred views.

Fallon hasn’t addressed the fact that he’s largely alone on late-night island this summer, but he did recently tell USA Today that he feels some responsibility to carry the genre into the next generation

“The idea of it is that it’s just someone that you can talk to that’s there for you, that you can laugh, and you can know what’s going on in pop culture in the world,” he said. “I think that’s just needed.”