A federal judge has set a trial date for the antitrust lawsuit challenging Paramount's $111 billion bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), temporarily halting the mega-merger until legal proceedings conclude.

According to a filing from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the trial has been scheduled to begin on March 2, 2027, and is expected to run for 12 court days, concluding by March 19. The court also established an April 5, 2027, deadline for "the parties' respective proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, complete with citations to legal authority and the factual record" to be submitted.

Last month, Paramount agreed to delay its merger until next year to address the antitrust lawsuit led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Bonta is heading a coalition of 12 state attorneys general who filed the lawsuit seeking to block the transaction.

The lawsuit claims the megadeal would "lead to higher prices, lower quality, and less content for film and television, harming movie theaters, basic cable distributors, and ultimately, audiences on every sofa and movie theater seat in the U.S."

Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the complaint asserts that the merger violates Section 7 of the Clayton Act, which holds that mergers that may substantially lessen competition or tend to create a monopoly are illegal. The case arrives amid a broader wave of antitrust scrutiny facing large media and technology consolidations, with regulators and state enforcers increasingly willing to challenge transactions they believe concentrate too much market power in single corporate hands.

Both sides argued their case last week, but Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín waited until Monday to issue the temporary delay. The merger, which was originally expected to close during the third quarter of this year, is now delayed until at least June 2027.

Paramount CEO David Ellison is seeking to acquire WBD in what would be a historic deal merging two major Hollywood studios under one corporate umbrella, along with their combined television networks, including CBS and CNN. The combined entity would bring together vast content libraries and streaming platforms—Paramount+ and Max—at a time when the industry is under pressure from cord-cutting, shrinking linear television revenue, and intense competition among streaming services.

Critics of the transaction argue that such a merger would crush the entertainment industry and lead to mass layoffs. Some opponents have also directed criticism at Ellison and his billionaire father, Larry Ellison, who is heavily financing the deal and is a close ally of President Donald Trump.

Liberal critics in particular have claimed that, as a result of the deal, CNN would be given a MAGA-leaning bent to its coverage and would be run by current CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, who has been sharply criticized by some media liberals. Paramount's CEO has previously assured that CNN would maintain editorial independence following the merger.

In an op-ed published in The New York Times on Tuesday, Ellison addressed what he described as the "speculation" about what would happen to CNN under his ownership.

"I have regularly voted for candidates of both parties; I hold some views that would be called conservative and others that would be called liberal, just like most Americans; and when it comes to our news operations, I do not aspire to lead these companies to bend their newsrooms to my views. I believe that news should be based on facts and truth," Ellison wrote.

"Great news organizations like CNN and CBS News are here to tell it straight down the middle," he added. "That requires newsrooms that reflect the whole world, not one side of it. And it requires independence."

This deal would follow Ellison's $8 billion purchase of Paramount, merging the studio with Skydance Media.

Fox News' Brian Flood contributed to this report.