A federal judge on Monday temporarily stopped Paramount from completing its $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery while she considers a lawsuit that argues the deal violates antitrust laws, a disruption to one of the biggest media deals in history.

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California issued a temporary restraining order that was requested by 12 states that have sued to block the deal.

The pause is a brief stopgap that lasts for only 14 days. But in the judge’s order, she raised the prospect of a much longer delay. She said she would weigh whether to grant an injunction, which could halt the deal from closing for months, at a hearing in early August.

The lawsuit is one of the final hurdles in Paramount’s persistent push to buy Warner Bros. Discovery and create a Hollywood giant. The merger would unite under one roof two major movie studios, the streaming services HBO Max and Paramount+, and networks including CBS and CNN.

A prolonged pause in the merger could be costly for Paramount. The company agreed to pay Warner Bros. Discovery’s shareholders a fee of $650 million for every quarter that the deal does not close, beginning in October. That puts an expensive shot clock on the deal, giving Paramount an extra incentive to resolve the states’ lawsuit quickly.

Paramount argues that the deal will help the company compete with streaming services like Netflix and Amazon. But attorneys general in several states, led by Rob Bonta of California, have argued that the deal would give Paramount outsized dominance over the production of films in wide release, tentpole movies, which are the costly would-be blockbusters that sustain studio revenues, and basic cable channels. The states previously said the deal could close as early as July 22.

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