WarnerMount has its first day in court. And RIP the great Peter Lassally.
The big news story of the day is that the court has paused the Paramount takeover of Warner Bros Discovery. Of course, this news story isn’t a surprise. The pause is only for fourteen days so that Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin has time to best assess the case.
The Temporary Restraining Order was expected by all parties, but that hasn’t stopped each side using the TRO to build their narratives in the press
Rob Bonta, the attorney general of California, hailed the judge’s ruling as a “critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day.”
And look, this is a win for the State AGs. If Judge Martinez-Olguin has ruled in favor of Paramount, then it would have been game over. But ultimately it’s working through the process.
The 14-day restraining order could be extended to as long as 28 days. Martinez-Olguin, of the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California in Oakland, also set a hearing on the preliminary injunction for Aug. 3, though that date, too, could be delayed if the parties agree.
You can read the full ruling, if that floats your boat.
If anyone is looking to read tea leaves on any of this, what I would look to is the narrative-setting press appearances of the two warring legal sides. I have heard Rob Bonta on countless podcasts this past week (he’s also running for re-election, so he needs to be highly visible right now) and you can mostly ignore what he has to say beyond his most salient point which is that this suit isn’t about streaming, but is very focused on the market impacts within theatrical distribution and cable television.
The more interesting interview was with Paramount’s chief legal counsel Makan Delrahim on The Town podcast. A former Trump anti-trust guy, he stampeded through the interview with a huge amount of bluster. And for me, that was the tell that the Paramount team don’t feel that they are on steady ground. He was laser focused on belittling Bonta’s argument and framing it as trivial. It was a steamroll of a conversation that left me unconvinced.
RIP Peter Lassally
Breaking news this morning is that Peter Lassally has died, aged 93. For many, it isn’t a name that people will know, but he was unquestionably one of the most influential people in US late night talk television.
Lassally was brought on to help produce The Tonight Show in the 70s when Johnny Carson was hosting. He was hired to put a steady hand on the ship, alongside Fred de Cordova (the producer Artie in The Larry Sanders Show was based on). It was Lassally and de Corva that set in motion plans to convince Carson to move the show from New York to LA.
Lassally stayed with The Tonight Show through to its finale, then moved on to become Executive Producer of The Late Show with David Letterman when that launched at CBS. Anyone who has watched the very entertaining movie The Late Shift will have seen Lassally’s role in helping Letterman make the decision to leave NBC when he wasn’t offered The Tonight Show.
In the years that followed, Lassally stayed involved in late night, mentoring figures like Jon Stewart. His last significant contribution was in Executive Producing The Late Late Show when it brought on Craig Ferguson to host the show. He remained EP on that show until Ferguson left the show in 2015. Then Lassally went on to a formal retirement.
It was sad today to hear of his passing.
Read: Variety
News Desk
Netflix’s latest data drop shows the top 500 series and films accounted for 47% of series views and 51% of movie views despite being just 6% of the 17,370 titles it streamed globally between January and June. Four titles alone — His & Hers, Bridgerton S4, War Machine, and The Rip — made up 2.1% of all viewing. Read: THR
Andy Burnham has replaced Keir Starmer as UK prime minister, becoming the country’s seventh PM in a decade and the first former Culture Secretary to take the job. Why is this relevant in ABW? Whether culture secretary Lisa Nandy survives the reshuffle at DCMS matters for WarnerMount — she declared herself “minded to intervene” in the Paramount-WBD merger on media plurality grounds in June, and a replacement would likely reset that clock. Read: Deadline
Disney+ has greenlit Afterlife With Archie, with Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa showrunning an adaptation of his own zombie-Riverdale comic and Greg Berlanti executive producing. Warner Bros. TV is the studio — a rare outside-studio pickup for Disney+ — and it’s slated for fall 2027. A shame they can’t get the Riverdale cast back for this one… Read: THR
Netflix has released first-look images from A Different World, premiering 24 September, focused on the daughter of OG series lead characters Whitley and Dwayne. The new version is a single camera dramedy. Read: THR
Scrubs has promoted Ava Bunn to series regular for season two, while Joel Kim Booster and X Mayo won’t be back. Read: THR
Jabari Banks, Chloe Fineman and Jamie McShane have joined Netflix’s Myron Bolitar as series regulars, with Ben McKenzie recurring. This is the new Netflix Harlan Coben adaptation with David E. Kelley and Kyle Long co-showrunning. Read: thefutoncritic
Lewis Pullman will star opposite Julia Garner in Apple TV’s Guilty Creatures. Read: THR
Netflix has re-signed Goalhanger’s The Rest Is Football in a two-year deal running through Euro 2028, with Gary Lineker, Alan Shearer, and Micah Richards back twice weekly across the 2026/27 Premier League season from August. Read: Deadline
The BBC has appointed tech entrepreneur and former “UK’s youngest CEO” Brandon Relph as head of strategy. Read: C21
Daredevil: Born Again has wrapped filming on season three, with Mike Colter, Finn Jones and Elodie Yung joining the returning regulars. I would expect this to be the end of the run for the show. Read: Dark Horizons
Wondering what David Zaslav is up to? He has made a $68m bid for Mohawk Day Camp in Westchester County, NY, a near-100-year-old summer camp caught up in a Chapter 11 collapse. WBD calls it “a personal family investment” — Zaslav’s kids attended when he was an NBC executive in Rye Brook. Read: THR
Trailer Park
My Brilliant Career debuts on Netflix August 13.
Philippa Northeast stars as Sybylla, a fiercely modern young woman with one burning ambition: to be a writer, even as her family pushes her toward marriage. In this new series adaptation of the classic Australian novel, Sybylla breaks every convention of 1900 Australia as she chases a story that could write her way to independence, until she falls in love. Will she marry, or risk it all for a creative life?
LEGO One Piece debuts on Netflix Sept 29.
The worst film of 2026, which coincidentally is also one of the most fun films of 2026, Masters of The Universe gets its streaming debut on Prime Video July 22.
Operation Safed Sagar: The Untold Story of the Kargil War debuts on Netflix August 7.
As the Kargil War erupts between India and Pakistan, the Golden Arrows squadron of the Air Force takes flight on a dangerous mission behind enemy lines.
Nando Between Two Worlds - A Sintonia Film debuts August 12 on Netflix.
Nando (Christian Malheiros) is back. But, as always, there is no easy way out. Five years after reaching the top of the criminal world, he is forced to leave Serbia and return to Brazil when his family is put at risk. However, his return also brings new threats and an impossible choice, and Nando must decide where his true loyalty lies.
The Oprah Podcast streams on Prime Video twice a week starting July 21.
That’s the newsletter for the today.
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