Hollywood
Paramount’s US antitrust waiting period on WBD bid expires
DOJ review continues as rival Netflix bid clouds the deal’s future
LOS ANGELES: Paramount said on Friday that the US antitrust waiting period for its $108.4 billion all-cash bid for Warner Bros Discovery expired on 19 February, clearing an early procedural hurdle in its attempt to buy the owner of HBO Max.
The expiry of the 10-day waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act means there is no statutory bar in the United States to closing the proposed transaction. It does not, however, bring regulatory scrutiny to an end.
The US Department of Justice can continue investigating the deal, seek additional information and still sue to block it before completion. In 2023, the department moved to stop JetBlue’s proposed acquisition of Spirit Airlines months after the waiting period had lapsed.
Complicating matters further, Paramount does not yet have a definitive agreement with Warner Bros Discovery. The studio group has separately entered into a deal with Netflix, which has offered $27.75 per share, valuing the studios and streaming assets at $82.7 billion.
“Paramount Skydance continues to mislead stockholders and distract from the facts,” said Netflix chief legal officer David Hyman. “They have not secured the approvals needed to close and they are a long way from doing so.”
Any Netflix-Warner Bros Discovery tie-up would itself face intense scrutiny from US and European competition authorities. These authorities would examine whether combining Netflix’s global streaming scale with Warner Bros Discovery’s century-old studio assets could curb competition or narrow consumer choice.
Hollywood
Utopai Studios partners Huace to deploy PAI for long form content
Deal includes revenue sharing as Huace adopts AI engine across global ops
MUMBAI: Lights, camera… algorithm, the script just got a silicon co-writer. In a move that signals how storytelling itself is being re-engineered, U.S.-based Utopai Studios has partnered China’s Huace Film & TV Co. Ltd. to bring artificial general intelligence into the heart of long-form content creation.
At the centre of the deal is PAI, Utopai’s cinematic storytelling system, which Huace will deploy as a core engine across its production pipeline from development and creative iteration to global localisation. The partnership includes a large-scale annual usage commitment from Huace, alongside a usage-based revenue-sharing model, underscoring both ambition and commercial confidence on both sides.
For Huace, one of China’s largest film and television companies, the bet is not on automation alone but on scale with control. With distribution spanning over 200 countries and a presence across more than 20 international platforms, including Netflix and YouTube, the company brings a vast content ecosystem where even marginal efficiency gains can translate into significant output shifts. Its extensive TV IP library further positions it as fertile ground for AI-assisted storytelling workflows.
The choice of PAI follows what Huace described as a rigorous evaluation of existing AI tools, many of which remain limited to fragmented use cases such as video generation or editing. What tipped the scales, according to the company, was PAI’s ability to handle long-form narrative complexity maintaining continuity, structure, and creative coherence across entire story arcs rather than isolated clips.
Utopai, for its part, is using the partnership to anchor its international expansion strategy, pitching PAI as an enterprise-ready system built for customisation, privacy, and regulatory adaptability across markets. That positioning becomes particularly relevant as global media companies increasingly scrutinise how AI integrates into proprietary workflows.
The timing is notable. Earlier this month, Utopai upgraded PAI to support three-minute 4K video generation and advanced multi-shot sequencing features designed to tackle one of AI storytelling’s biggest hurdles: consistency across scenes.
What emerges is not just another tech collaboration, but a glimpse into how the grammar of filmmaking could evolve. Because if stories were once crafted frame by frame, the next chapter might just be coded scene by scene.
