In recent weeks, pressure has been mounting on California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

David Ellison’s Paramount has not-so-subtly leaked to the press that he is dead serious about moving the historic studio out of California if Bonta does not back down in the antitrust lawsuit that he and 11 other states brought to block Paramount’s Warner Bros. Discovery merger.

Ellison’s threat to pack up Paramount and take with it thousands of jobs and badly-needed Hollywood revenue has apparently spooked California’s leading Democrats. Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, and gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra, have all publicly urged Bonta to settle the suit rather than continue toward a trial scheduled for March.

They appear to be getting their wish.

On Friday, The Wall Street Journal first reported that Bonta and Paramount are in advanced talks to settle the lawsuit blocking Ellison’s pursuit of Warner Bros.—a $111 billion mega-merger that would unite two of Hollywood’s biggest studios, a sprawling collection of cable and entertainment assets, and cement the 43-year-old Ellison as a formidable media mogul.

Among the concessions under discussion, Status has learned, is the formation of an editorial board or monitor that would independently oversee CNN, ostensibly to protect the news network from corporate pressures exerted by the Trump friendly Ellisons. And Bonta appears to be moving toward a deal with Paramount that would put the lawsuit behind him, perhaps as soon as this weekend. But not everyone is on board.

Status has also learned that officials from at least two of the 12 states that joined Bonta in the suit to block the merger—New York and Connecticut—have privately voiced concerns about the potential agreement, which could soon come to fruition. Attorneys general in those states, who are not facing the same California-specific pressures to settle in hopes of placating Ellison to keep thousands of jobs from leaving the state, are pressing for greater concessions. Also unclear is how the Writers Guild of America, whose own lawsuit to block the merger was consolidated into the states’ action, could be satisfied by concessions from Paramount.

Representatives for New York Attorney General Letitia James and Connecticut Attorney General William Tong did not respond to requests for comment. A Bonta spokesperson told Status: “Potential settlement talks are confidential. We cannot confirm or deny whether settlement talks are occurring or their alleged substance.”

Bonta himself has maintained that any settlement would require “structural” remedies—perhaps forcing Paramount to sell off its cable assets or one of its studios—rather than a mere “behavioral” promise about how the entertainment giant would operate after the merger. But, at least for now, that does not appear to be the direction of the talks. The pressure on Bonta is at “an 11 out of 10,” one person told Status.

Still, the possibility that the California AG could move toward an agreement without the structural remedies he previously demanded did not sit well with some inside CNN, who are now facing the prospect of working for Ellison.

“It’s lipstick on a pig,” a person close to the CNN newsroom said.

“The idea of an independent oversight board for CNN is truly problematic,” veteran technology journalist and CNN contributor Kara Swisher wrote. “You don’t need to monitor journalists if you hire competent people. And they don’t have the guts to put those who cannot be bought and paid for on such a board.”

Of course, CNN, despite its modest size and revenue significance in the overall deal, has been thrust into the center of the tug-of-war for WBD. Donald Trump has publicly insisted that any deal for Warners includes new control of the news network, and the Ellisons, with their ownership of CBS News, has installed Bari Weiss as chief, giving her the authority to launch a radical overhaul of the network's programming, firing "60 Minutes" correspondents and producers, and sending the network's viewership spiraling.

“The Bari tenure has been so damning, which the ratings have illustrated, that they need to do a lot more to win back trust from both the audience and employees,” the person close to the CNN newsroom said.

Now, with Paramount staring down an Oct. 1 deadline that would trigger a roughly $7 million-a-day ticking fee to WBD shareholders, the pressure to get a deal done is only intensifying. The question now is whether Bonta and the other states will bend to give Ellison a quick settlement—or stand firm on their demand for significant structural changes.