LOS ANGELES, Sept. 25 -- A federal judge presiding over Hollywood's most consequential business deal in decades made clear on Thursday that the entertainment industry's ambitions would not outpace her scrutiny.

"The court is not a rubber stamp of your agreement," Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin told attorneys for Paramount Skydance and the twelve state attorneys general who settled their blockbuster antitrust challenge last week to the $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition. She deferred her ruling on the proposed consent decree to a point "in due course," leaving six days before the deal's contractual close deadline.

The hearing, conducted via Zoom from the Northern District of California, produced no decision timeline. What it ...