A federal court entered an order on 4 August for a single 12-day trial beginning 2 March 2027 and ending 19 March 2027, covering both the plaintiff-states case and the Writers Guild of America, West case against the Paramount Skydance acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The same order cancelled preliminary-injunction briefing and the 3 August hearing. Paramount Skydance disclosed it in its Form 10-Q, the quarterly report a US-listed company lodges with the SEC1.
The twelve-state antitrust action led by California and the Writers Guild suit are the two cases now folded into that one trial, before Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín in San Francisco. Both had been heading for a preliminary-injunction ruling, which would have settled within weeks whether the merger could close while the cases ran. They are now heading for a trial seven months out, on a track the parties chose themselves after Paramount Skydance filed its own stipulation not to close.
This resolves the question we flagged in the last briefing about whether an injunction would freeze the deal before the autumn. It will not, because the injunction stage no longer exists. Cancelling that briefing is the substantive move rather than the date: a preliminary injunction turns on likelihood of success and would have given both sides an early read on the merits. An acquirer that has already agreed not to close loses nothing by waiting, and avoids carrying an adverse preliminary finding into settlement talks.
For anyone selling into either studio estate, the timetable now matters more than the clearances. Integration budgets, tooling consolidation and vendor rationalisation were modelled on a 2026 close and sit behind a first-quarter-2027 court diary. A trial date is a floor rather than an ending: cases settle, dates slip, and judgment can land months after the last day of evidence. When the Department of Justice fought AT&T's purchase of Time Warner to trial in 2018, the court cleared it and the buyer closed within days.
