Paramount did not immediately respond to requests for further comment. But CEO David Ellison earlier applauded Warner's board affirming “the superior value of our offer.”

A Paramount-Warner combo would combine two of Hollywood’s five legacy studios that remain today, in addition to their theatrical channels. Beyond “Harry Potter,” Warner movies like “Superman,” “Barbie,” and “One Battle After Another” — as well as hit TV series like “The White Lotus” and “Succession” — would join Paramount’s content library.

Paramount’s lineup of titles include “Top Gun,” “Titanic” and “The Godfather.” And beyond CBS, it owns networks like MTV and Nickelodeon, as well as the Paramount+ streaming service.

A merger between the two companies would put CNN under the same roof as CBS, which has already seen significant editorial shifts under new Skydance ownership. Paramount took steps to appeal to more conservative viewers in its news operations, notably with the installation of Free Press founder Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief of CBS News. And if the company’s takeover bid of Warner is successful, critics warn similar shifts could happen CNN, a network that has long attracted ire from Trump.

“Any concerns about Netflix owning Warner Bros. are only heightened by the prospect of Paramount owning all of WBD. But it might not even matter,” Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester, a market research company, said in an email. “Politics are playing an outsized role in this deal, and they’ve been on Paramount’s side from the get?go.”

President Donald Trump has a close relationship with the billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount's CEO David Ellison who is heavily backing Paramount’s bid to buy Warner. And Paramount's aggressive push to acquire Warner arrived just months after Skydance closed its own buyout of Paramount in a contentious merger approved just weeks after the company agreed to pay the president $16 million to settle a lawsuit over editing at Paramount’s “60 Minutes” program on CBS.

Still, Trump has continued to publicly lash out at Paramount over editorial decisions at CBS’ “60 Minutes.” And while the president previously made unprecedented suggestions about his involvement in seeing a Warner deal through, he's since walked back those statements and maintained that regulatory approval will be up to the Justice Department.

Still, top Democratic lawmakers have sounded the alarm about the Republican president's ties to companies like Paramount and potential consequences of growing corporate power.

"A handful of Trump-aligned billionaires are trying to seize control of what you watch and charge you whatever price they want," Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a longtime antitrust hawk, said in a statement Thursday night. She also called a potential Paramount-Warner combo an “antitrust disaster."

Executives at Paramount have argued that merging with Warner will allow it to compete with bigger rivals particularly in the streaming space, and bring larger content libraries for its customers. But Warren and other critics say such a merger threatens higher prices, and that a Warner takeover would only further consolidate power in an industry already run by just a few major players. Some trade groups also warn that could mean job losses and less diversity in filmmaking.

When Netflix was still in the running, one of its key arguments against a Warner-Paramount tie-up was that it would combine two very similar companies: two legacy studios, two theatrical channels and two major news networks. The streaming giant said that posed a higher risk for job losses and other competition concerns.

In contrast, executives from both Netflix and Warner argued at a Senate antitrust hearing earlier this month that Netflix doesn’t have the same studios and film distribution that Warner does. That was “one of the reasons that the Netflix offer appeals to us so much,” Bruce Campbell, Warner's chief revenue and strategy officer, told senators on Feb. 3 — noting that the company believed Netflix would not only keep Warner's operations intact, but “invest in continued production.”

How regulators will respond to a Warner-Paramount deal remains to be seen. The U.S. Department of Justice has already initiated reviews, and other countries are expected to do so, too.

Warner shareholders will have to be convinced, too. Beyond a higher price, Paramount has also tried to entice them by pledging to move up a previously-promised “ticking fee.” The company initially said it would pay 25 cents per share for every quarter the deal drags on past the end of the year. Now it’s agreed to pay that amount if the deal doesn’t go through by the end of September. It also agreed to a regulatory termination fee of $7 billion.

But Paramount is taking on billions of dollars in debt to finance its offer — something critics have warned could only increase to the likelihood of potential job losses and other restructuring down the road. Foreign sovereign wealth funds have also provided equity for the offer, drawing added scrutiny.