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Makan Delrahim Defends the WarnerMount Deal

Days after Paramount’s lawyers made their first appearance in federal court to defend the Warner Bros. Discovery merger, chief legal officer Makan Delrahim joined The Town to make the studio’s case.

Makan Delrahim
Paramount’s chief legal officer, Makan Delrahim Photo: Mike Cohen / Getty Images for The New York Times
Matthew Belloni
July 20, 2026

On Friday, Paramount Skydance’s lawyers headed north to a federal court in Oakland for the first public defense of the David Ellison–led studio’s $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The judge in the case, Araceli Martínez-Olguín, is deciding whether to temporarily block the merger from closing on behalf of California and 11 other states, who argue that the deal illegally constrains three specific markets: wide-release movies in theaters, the release of so-called “blockbuster” films, and the distribution of cable TV networks.