Warner Bros. Discovery’s lunch at the Food Network Kitchen after its upfront pitch to advertisers has become “an annual ritual,” in the words of Chief Revenue and Strategy Officer Bruce Campbell.

This year’s edition, however, unfolded in the shadow of the pending $110 billion acquisition of WBD by David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance. The industry-altering deal, which is due to close by September 30 barring an 11th-hour legal challenge, gave the event an undeniably valedictory feel. “Welcome to the Last Supper,” one waggish WBD staffer joked as guests arrived.

M&A deals are due to put assets like the Turner networks, HBO and Warner Bros. in the hands of a fourth corporate parent in eight years, earned a couple of mentions (direct or otherwise) during the company’s presentation. Co-head of sales Bobby Voltaggio got off the best line by any exec at the upfronts when he said he wanted to address “the Ellison – I mean, the elephant in the room.” Leslie Jones, plugging her new HGTV series Roast My Rental, rattled off the names of a few of the two dozen cable networks on the roster (which ballooned after the 2022 merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery). Speaking for many in the audience, she wondered aloud, “How many channels y’all got?!”

Campbell referenced Voltaggio’s “Freudian slip” in a brief toast to colleagues, advertisers and members of the press at the lunch. “This is a year of change for us,” he said. “But I hope you saw today everything we have to offer, both in terms of our advertising products, the breadth and depth of all of our media properties, but also how hard we want to work to earn your business. So it is going to be a year of change, but this team is up for the challenge.”

One senior WBD exec Deadline spoke with at the lunch said he was asked by colleagues recently what would happen if the deal somehow didn’t close. “I told them, ‘This deal is happening. There is no doubt about that.'”

While a few international regulators still need to sign off, WBD shareholders have given their approval, and financing arrangements have been finalized. Two X factors are also widely assumed to be in Paramount’s favor. One is the longtime alliance between deal backer Larry Ellison, father of Paramount CEO David Ellison, and President Trump. The other is the role of Makan Delrahim, who led the government’s lawsuit against AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner while heading up the Department of Justice’s antitrust division, is now Paramount’s chief legal officer, helping steer the company through the regulatory process.

Without wading into politics, the WBD exec mentioned the debate months ago about whether Netflix’s earlier bid for the company’s studio-and-streaming unit, would have passed muster with regulators. “I always told everyone that both deals were going to be approved,” the exec said.

At roughly the same time as WBD’s upfront at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden, Paramount exec Dennis Cinelli was a short distance away in Midtown Manhattan. He was making his first appearance at an investor conference since being named chief financial officer in January.

“We continue to build momentum toward close,” Cinelli said at the event hosted by research firm MoffettNathanson. “This is a big undertaking, but we’ve been planning for it. No. 1, the culture around this is different from prior mergers. You’re talking about company that’s owner/operator-led. The CEO is the largest shareholder of the company. … The leadership team is incentivized. It’s very much like in Silicon Valley, where everyone’s an owner of the company. That is a different lens than other media mergers.”