Warner Bros. Discovery Stockholders Approve Paramount Merger
Warner Bros. Discovery stockholders voted overwhelmingly at a Special Meeting held today to approve the company’s pending merger with Paramount Skydance Corporation, clearing a critical procedural threshold in one of the largest media consolidations in recent memory.
Samuel A. Di Piazza, Jr., Chair of the WBD Board of Directors, framed the result as a mandate to extract value from the combined entity’s content libraries and distribution assets. President and CEO David Zaslav, who has spent four years restructuring WBD following its own 2022 formation from the WarnerMedia-Discovery merger, called the vote “another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction.”
Final vote tallies remain subject to certification by the company’s independent inspector of election and will be filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. The deal is expected to close in Q3 2026, pending regulatory clearances and other customary conditions.
Allen & Company, J.P. Morgan, and Evercore are advising WBD on the financial side. Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Debevoise & Plimpton LLP are serving as legal counsel.
If regulators clear the combination on schedule, the merged company would bring together HBO, Warner Bros., CNN, Discovery, Paramount Pictures, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the Paramount+ streaming platform under a single corporate roof — a concentration of IP and distribution that will face intense scrutiny before the quarter is out.