Paramount is offering theater chains a contract: 30 movies a year, in writing
Paramount has offered AMC and Regal three-year contracts guaranteeing 30 theatrical releases a year with 45-day exclusive windows, if its Warner Bros. merger closes. It’s aimed at the states suing to block the deal, whose best argument is that such promises are unenforceable.
Paramount wants to prove it’s serious about theaters, so it’s putting a number in a contract: 30 movies a year, guaranteed, if its Warner Bros. merger goes through.
Per Bloomberg, Paramount Skydance has offered three-year agreements to AMC and Regal, the two largest theater chains, committing to release 30 films a year in cinemas, each with an exclusive theatrical window of at least 45 days and held off streaming for at least 90 days. The contracts would carry financial penalties if Paramount falls short.
It’s a legal maneuver as much as a business one, and the target is the lawsuit trying to stop the whole deal.
Why Paramount is doing this
The move is aimed squarely at the antitrust case against the merger.
Twelve state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, are suing to block Paramount’s $110 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing a combined company would control too much of the theatrical market and could cut film output to feed its own streaming services. Their strongest point, the one Bonta landed cleanly, is that executive promises made to win merger approval are historically worthless.
His example: David Zaslav promised 20 movies a year and delivered fewer. So why believe David Ellison’s 30? Paramount’s answer is to make the promise legally binding, with penalties, so it’s no longer just an executive’s word. The states’ own filing called the 30-film pledge “unenforceable and implausible,” this is Paramount trying to make it enforceable.
The theater chains are already on board
Here’s the wrinkle that makes the antitrust fight awkward for the states.
The lawsuit is backed by Cinema United, the lobbying group representing theater owners, including AMC and Regal. But those two chains have publicly broken with the lobby and backed the merger. AMC boss Adam Aron wrote a Variety op-ed supporting the deal, and Regal CEO Eduardo Acuna called Ellison sincere and warned that a long trial “could be damaging to our industry.”
So the states say they’re suing to protect theaters, while the two biggest theater companies on earth keep siding with Paramount and are now being handed contracts that guarantee them product. That’s a genuinely difficult optics problem for the case.
Whether it actually works
Two open questions hang over the whole gambit, and they cut in different directions.
The legal question is whether binding contracts with two chains address a market-wide antitrust concern, or whether they just lock in favorable terms for AMC and Regal while the broader worry about output and competition remains. A promise to two companies isn’t the same as a promise to the market.
The business question is simpler and more brutal: what if audiences don’t care? Paramount can guarantee 30 theatrical releases, but it can’t guarantee anyone buys tickets, and 2026’s box office has been rough. A contractual commitment to release movies theatrically is only worth something if theatrical is still where the money is.
Still, the strategic logic is clear. Paramount is systematically dismantling the states’ arguments, an enforceable pledge here, a consent-decree offer there, while California’s own governor reportedly pushes Bonta toward a settlement. The trial is set for March 2027, but Paramount is fighting to make sure it never has to happen.
Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
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Hat Tips:
Bloomberg (August 9, 2026), verified for the three-year agreements offered to AMC and Regal, the 30-films-a-year commitment, the 45-day theatrical and 90-day streaming windows, the financial penalties, and the private-agreement sourcing
Variety (August 9, 2026), verified for the enforceable-commitment framing, the antitrust-lawsuit context, the 12-state case, the “unenforceable and implausible” filing language, and the 2026 theatrical-revenue decline
The Hollywood Reporter and Variety (August 6, 2026), verified for Regal CEO Eduardo Acuna’s and AMC CEO Adam Aron’s public support, the $30 billion content-investment pledge, the Cinema United opposition, and the 30-percent-market-share argument
Storyboard18 (via Bloomberg) (August 9, 2026), verified for Ellison’s prior public pledge, the exclusive-window terms, and the New York Times op-ed