AMC and Regal Break With Their Own Lobby, Backing the Merger for 30 Films and 45 Days
– The world’s two largest chains take the opposite position from Cinema United, which has opposed the Paramount-Warner deal
– Three years of guaranteed annual output, 45-day theatrical exclusivity and 90-day streaming holds — with penalties whose bite is in question
AMC Entertainment and Cineworld Group’s Regal Cinemas, the world’s two largest exhibition chains, have come out in favor of Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, Bloomberg reported. That puts them directly at odds with Cinema United, the main exhibitors’ trade body, which has said the merger would be bad for business.
What moved them is a contract. Bloomberg reported on Aug. 8 that Paramount CEO David Ellison has agreed to sign a commitment to put 30 movies a year in theaters if the deal goes through — wide releases that would stay exclusive to theaters for at least 45 days.
What exhibitors can actually extract from a studio is not the performance of any given film but the number of releases and the length of the exclusive window. Both had dropped off the table as studios trimmed slates and shortened windows after the pandemic. Restoring them as a three-year written commitment was enough to pull the two largest chains off their trade body’s line.
What the two chains secured
According to Bloomberg and TheWrap, the terms are at least 30 theatrical releases a year for three years after closing, a minimum 45-day theatrical exclusive, and a minimum 90-day hold before streaming. Financial penalties apply if Paramount falls short, though Bloomberg noted the specifics remain unclear. TheWrap reported that the U.K. chain Vue Cinemas received the same offer.
Regal CEO Eduardo Acuña listed the terms last week as at least 30 theatrical films annually, a 45-day TVOD and 90-day SVOD window for a minimum of three years, and $30 billion in annual content investment, saying he takes Ellison’s commitments as sincere. He added that Ellison has offered to execute a consent decree with the state attorneys general.
AMC CEO Adam Aron published an op-ed in Variety backing the deal. Paramount has said publicly it is willing to put the 30-film commitment in writing.
Why the trade body stayed put
Cinema United remains opposed. Its chief executive, Michael O’Leary, said when the suit was filed that further studio consolidation would carry consequences well beyond Hollywood, reaching the local theaters that anchor communities across the country.
The association represents large chains and independents alike. A guarantee of 30 wide releases a year reaches operators with national screen counts first. For smaller theaters with less leverage over booking and terms, the same commitment does not carry the same weight.
Would the penalty ever be invoked?
Bloomberg also relayed skepticism about the penalties: a theater chain is unlikely to fine one of its largest partners a significant sum.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta has made the same point. He calls these behavioral remedies and says they are hard to enforce, telling CNN that any settlement would have to include structural remedies. A private contract and a consent decree are, by construction, behavioral.
The coalition Bonta leads filed on July 13 under the Clayton Act. The complaint puts the combined company at 27% of the U.S. wide-release theatrical distribution market, 30% of the market for anticipated top-grossing films, and 27% of basic cable channel licensing, 34% by some counts. The states call the 30-film pledge implausible as well as unenforceable, citing Warner Bros.’ failure to hit publicly stated release targets in 2023 and 2024. The complaint’s second pillar, basic cable licensing, is untouched by an output guarantee.
The Disney-Fox precedent
Ellison has made versions of this promise for months without persuading the industry. Bloomberg pointed to Disney’s acquisition of 21st Century Fox as the reason: Disney told the market the deal would be good for the movie business, then suppressed output.
As an independent studio, 20th Century Fox put 17 films in theaters in 2014. After the acquisition, Disney restructured the Fox label around a slate of roughly 10 titles a year, and CEO Bob Iger confirmed on a 2019 earnings call that Fox’s output would be cut substantially. That history is why a verbal assurance has given way to a signed one.
Why they are betting anyway
Bloomberg framed the two chains’ position as a long-term bet: Aron and Acuña expect the deal to close and the lawsuits to fail. Regulators around the world have cleared the merger, and the U.K. recently joined them.
There is also a calculation that a deal destined to close is better closed quickly. Trial does not begin until March 2027, and if the deal has not closed by Sept. 30, Paramount owes WBD shareholders a ticking fee of 25 cents per share per quarter, roughly $650 million a quarter or about $7 million a day. Paramount plans to borrow close to $50 billion for the acquisition; the combined company would carry an estimated $80 billion in debt. The longer the suit runs, the weaker both the supplier and the exhibitor get.
Bloomberg noted that once the merger is done, the chains would rather Ellison see them as allies than as adversaries.
The numbers exhibitors are leaning on — and the limits of output
North American box office stood at roughly $6.2 billion in early August, up 15% year-over-year and 11% below the same point in 2019, with analysts projecting a $10 billion year — the first since 2019.
The recovery was built by a few large titles rather than by volume. Sony and Marvel’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” opened to a record $360 million domestically and crossed $1 billion worldwide in less than a week. Bloomberg suggested it could become the first film ever to reach $1 billion in the U.S. alone and noted its unusually strong run in China, a rarity for Hollywood lately. Universal’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” Lionsgate’s “Michael” and Disney-Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” crossed the same line earlier this year. Viewers aged 14 to 29 made up 49% of the “Spider-Man” opening-day crowd and 30% of the opening day for Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”
Paramount itself shows that guaranteed output is not guaranteed revenue. Expanding its slate from eight films in 2025 to 15 this year, the company guided Wall Street to significantly lower theatrical revenue on lower average box office per film; second-quarter theatrical revenue fell 45% to $138 million. The quarter’s biggest release was “Scary Movie,” out June 5, at $108 million domestic and $231 million worldwide.
In a New York Times op-ed last week, Ellison conceded he cannot guarantee any individual film’s performance. He wrote that “G.I. Joe: Retaliation” met expectations, “Top Gun: Maverick” exceeded them and “Terminator: Dark Fate” fell short, and that what he can promise is the work and more of it.
What this means for Korean players
In the U.S., the 45-day and 90-day thresholds are hardening through private studio-exhibitor agreements backed by penalty clauses rather than through law. Korea’s multi-year holdback debate has leaned toward funds and statutory rules. Building enforcement into multi-year distributor-exhibitor and distributor-OTT contracts is the more workable path.
This case also exposes what a contract alone cannot fix. Even with a penalty clause, the question remains whether a chain would ever invoice its largest supplier. Korean holdback agreements would be better designed with third-party verification or public disclosure rather than leaving enforcement entirely inside the bilateral relationship.
The split between large chains and small operators applies at home as well. Output and window guarantees reach nationwide circuits first. Any negotiating table that seats Korea’s three multiplex groups alongside single-screen and arthouse venues has to be designed around that asymmetry rather than around a single set of terms.
The short shelf life of behavioral remedies is also familiar. In June 2025 the Korea Fair Trade Commission (공정거래위원회) conditionally cleared the executive-interlock combination between TVING (티빙) and Wavve (웨이브), imposing a behavioral remedy that freezes current pricing through the end of 2026. That is the category of remedy Bonta is refusing.
A combined Paramount-Warner also removes a U.S. window for K-content rights and tilts basic cable licensing negotiations toward the buy side. The contraction of the Fox label’s output after the Disney deal is a useful reference for forecasting commissioning volume at Warner labels post-merger. License fees, term lengths and territorial rights splits are worth revisiting now.
Sources
· Bloomberg entertainment newsletter, Aug. 10, 2026 — on why AMC and Regal backed the deal, the written 30-film commitment, the enforceability of penalties, the Disney-Fox comparison, U.K. clearance and the trial date.
· Todd Spangler, “David Ellison Is Promising Theater Owners Contractual Guarantees for Paramount-Warner Bros. 30-Film Annual Slate”, Variety, Aug. 9, 2026. https://variety.com/2026/film/news/david-ellison-theater-owners-guarantee-30-movies-paramount-warner-bros-merger-1236830791/
· “Paramount to sign contract with theatre chains guaranteeing 30 films/year”, citing Bloomberg, Business Standard, Aug. 9, 2026. https://www.business-standard.com/world-news/paramount-to-sign-contract-with-theatre-chains-guaranteeing-30-films-year-126080900774_1.html
· “Paramount Offers to Put David Ellison’s Annual 30-Film Theatrical Promise in Writing”, TheWrap, Aug. 2026. https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/deals-ma/paramount-theatrical-pledge-in-writing-theaters/
· “Regal Cinemas CEO Champions Paramount-WBD Merger”, Deadline, Aug. 5, 2026. https://deadline.com/2026/08/regal-cinemas-ceo-paramount-warner-bros-merger-1237027050/
· “Regal Cinemas CEO Backs Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger”, The Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 5, 2026. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/regal-cinemas-ceo-paramount-warner-bros-1236665588/
· “States Sue to Block Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger, Defying DOJ”, Variety, July 13, 2026. https://variety.com/2026/film/news/paramount-warner-bros-merger-states-lawsuit-1236806824/
· “12 States File Antitrust Lawsuit to Block Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Merger”, IndieWire, July 13, 2026. https://www.indiewire.com/news/breaking-news/states-antitrust-lawsuit-block-paramount-warner-bros-merger-1235204936/
· “Paramount-Warner Bros. Deal Challenged by California, States”, Bloomberg Law, July 2026. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/antitrust/paramount-warner-bros-deal-challenged-by-california-states
· “Paramount-Warner Bros Merger: What’s Next in States’ Antitrust Lawsuit”, Variety, July 2026. https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/paramount-warner-bros-whats-next-state-antitrust-lawsuit-1236819518/
· “Paramount Skydance (PSKY) earnings Q2 2026”, CNBC, Aug. 4, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/04/paramount-skydance-psky-earnings-q2-2026.html
· “The Box Office Comeback Finally Happened”, The Hollywood Reporter, Aug. 4, 2026. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/box-office-2026-spider-man-odyssey-1236663643/
· “‘Spider-Man’ joins list of 2026 billion-dollar movies”, CNBC, Aug. 5, 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/05/hollywood-2026-billion-dollar-movies.html
· “Disney is halving the number of films that Fox makes”, Film Stories, May 2019 (Bob Iger earnings-call remarks). https://filmstories.co.uk/news/disney-is-halving-the-number-of-films-that-fox-makes/
· “4 Years Under Disney: What Is 20th Century Studios Now?”, IndieWire / Yahoo Entertainment, Sept. 2023 (Fox’s 17 theatrical releases in 2014). https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/4-years-under-disney-20th-130000215.html
· Korea Fair Trade Commission (공정거래위원회), decision on the TVING-Wavve executive-interlock combination, June 10, 2025. https://eiec.kdi.re.kr/policy/materialView.do?num=267475