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Paramount’s lawyers filed a legal response to the states’ antitrust lawsuit against the Warner Bros. Discovery merger on Friday, sketching out arguments and defenses it may use at a trial next March.

Among other defenses, Paramount’s lawyers said they may claim that the coalition of 12 states lacks the authority to regulate the merger, “which is vested in the U.S. Department of Justice.” However, states do have the authority to bring claims alleging harms caused by conduct violative of federal antitrust law.

Paramount also noted that Cinema United, the trade group for theater chains, has called for a settlement.

“Day by day, the weak case against this Merger gets even weaker,” the company argued, adding that it also plans to challenge the states’ market definitions. “Plaintiffs’ case amounts to a series of attempted shortcuts and assumptions that collapse under scrutiny.”

California led the state coalition in suing to block the merger in July, arguing that the deal will create unlawful concentration in the basic cable market and in the wide-release and blockbuster theatrical markets. The DOJ had earlier approved the merger, issuing a memo laying out its reasoning for why the deal should be allowed to go forward.

States typically work with the DOJ in antitrust cases, but under the Trump administration California and several others have often charted their own course.

Paramount has repeatedly argued that the deal will be pro-competitive, and will result in more movies and TV shows.

In its answer to the complaint, the company denied the states’ allegations — a requisite formality to establish a legal controversy. The company also added a few pages of argument, alleging that the states’ case ignores the broader context of an industry in rapid transition to streaming.

“The way audiences consume content is changing rapidly. Streaming services now have greater viewership than movie theaters and cable television,” Paramount argues. “Plaintiffs’ case depends on ignoring this reality. It involves a series of gerrymandered markets based on cherry-picked data from the past. The alleged markets are not the product of sound economic analysis or current market realities. They have been invented for one purpose and one purpose only: to trigger a presumption — any presumption, no matter how weak — in the hopes the Court will look no further.”

The Writers Guild of America has filed its own lawsuit arguing that the merger will reduce the marketplace for writers’ work. That case is set to be heard alongside the states’ challenge at trial on March 2, 2027.

Paramount has agreed not to close the deal until a ruling is issued after the trial — though it is asking the court to require the plaintiffs to post a $1.88 billion bond as the price of continuing the litigation. A judge is set to hear arguments on that request on Sept. 24.

Meanwhile, a court will hold a two-day settlement conference in the antitrust case with the parties in late October. That’s a standard part of civil procedure and does not indicate whether a deal is in the offing.

Gary Oldman, who played Sirius Black in four “Harry Potter” movies, said he believes HBO’s forthcoming TV series adaptation set in the Wizarding World will be a bigger crowd-pleaser than the Warner Bros. films.

That’s because the movies were significantly abridged from J.K. Rowling’s original books, whereas HBO’s “Harry Potter” is including far more of the source material, the British actor said in a recent interview with EW.

“We had to cut a lot [for the ‘Harry Potter’ movies], and still we could only get the films down to, like, three hours,” Oldman said, adding that “a lot of character detail was sacrificed” in the process. “I believe [the HBO series is] gonna do it pretty much word-for-word, which I think, as a viewer, would be more satisfying.”

Oldman has previously opined that Sirius Black, a character he loves, did not get enough screen time in the movies. “He wasn’t in it enough. He turned up and then he went through the veil,” Oldman told IndieWire in 2024. Oldman’s Black first appeared in 2004’s “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” but he had only cameos in “Goblet of Fire” and “Deathly Hallows Part 2″ and a brief appearance in “Order of the Phoenix” before his character is killed off.

That said, Oldman told EW he is “proud” and “grateful” to have been part of the “Harry Potter” films “because it is such a phenomenon, the like of which I don’t think you’re ever gonna see again.”

“When you think of that initial cast, someone in the story who doesn’t get a lot of credit anymore is [director] Chris Columbus, who set the world up and cast it,” he said. “We were extraordinarily lucky to have those people come back again, and again, and again, and literally grow into those roles.”

Oldman will next appear in Season 6 of Apple TV’s “Slow Horses,” which premieres Sept. 16.

Season 1 of HBO’s “Harry Potter” TV show has wrapped and will premiere on HBO and HBO Max on Dec. 25. The second season, which will be based on the second book in Rowling’s beloved fantasy series, is currently in pre-production at Leavesden Studios outside London.

HBO has not announced casting for the role of Sirius Black in the series to this point. The cast of HBO’s “Harry Potter” series includes Dominic McLaughlin in the title role alongside Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger and Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley; John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore; Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall; Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape; Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid; Rory Wilmot as Neville Longbottom; and Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy.

Meanwhile, Oldman once said that his performance as Sirius Black in the movies was “mediocre,” but he later clarified that he didn’t mean to “disparage anyone out there who are fans of ‘Harry Potter’ and the films and the character who I think is much beloved.”

“What I meant by that is, as any artist or any actor or painter, you are always hypercritical of your own work,” he told Variety in 2024. “If you’re not, and you’re satisfied with what you’re doing, that would be death to me. If I watched a performance of myself and thought, ‘My God, I’m fantastic in this,’ that would be a sad day.”