I think we need to really reassess the laws around mergers. The question shouldn't be "will this merger lead to harm?" with the assumption that it won't. The question should be "what is the benefit of this merger and can a similar benefit be made through other means (such as an IP license agreement)?" The assumption should also be that any merger will lead to job losses since duplicating things like advertising, human resources, and all other "support" functions doesn't make sense within a single company and thus the company proposing a merger should need to defend itself from that adversarial point of view. If the acquiring company claims they'll make more movies, the question should be "why can't you make more movies now either using their own IP or through co-production with the target company?" There should be an order of preference with merger being the last, worst case, option below everything else such as a customer-supplier relationship, licensing IP, collaboration on a project, forming a third party partnership entity, and even making the merger target a wholly owned but independently managed subsidiary.
Further, any promises made should be enforceable even decades after the fact, e.g. if they promise not to close a studio or not to limit distribution then they should be held to that promise for a significant amount of time.
