David Ellison is making a lot of promises. History shows promises made when trying to merge are meaningless. So don’t try negotiating a better Paramount-Warner merger, just oppose it.

Right now, Paramount CEO David Ellison is encouraging Hollywood to embrace his acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. His team is offering promises, such as a guarantee of making 30 films a year plus a 45-day theatrical window and licensing concessions, to allay fears that the merger will lead to job loss, reduced content output and less competition across the industry. 

But these promises are a Trojan horse that rarely leads to meaningful actions, and comes with few guarantees, as we’ve seen in merger after merger. The process is like clockwork: when big companies acquire their rivals, they often encounter a skeptical industry and antitrust enforcers who must decide whether to challenge a deal. Challenging a deal outright is expensive and risky, while allowing it to go through without any opposition seems naïve.

One path that often seems to be a ‘win-win’ is to negotiate concessions to make the combination more palatable, while still allowing it to go through. These concessions can be sales of lines of business, known as ‘divestitures,’ or promises about conduct, known as ‘behavioral remedies.’ 

These promises are typically memorialized in a consent decree: a court-approved settlement that lets the deal close in exchange for a company’s word. Unfortunately, they often fail. And when they do, the damage is far harder to undo than it would have been to block the deal in the first place. The companies are already integrated and much harder to seperate. Workers and consumers are already paying the price.