Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved the company’s proposed merger with Paramount Skydance in a preliminary vote on Thursday, bringing a buzzy sale process one step closer to the finish line.

Paramount has offered $31 per share for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery — its cable TV networks like TNT, CNN and Discovery Channel as well as its streaming service HBO Max and the Warner Bros. film studio. That proposal was the result of several offers since September and a bidding war with Netflix and Comcast.

In late February, Paramount’s upped offer to $31 spurred Netflix to walk away from its own proposed deal for WBD’s studio and streaming assets.

Paramount’s offer includes a $7 billion breakup fee in the event the proposed merger doesn’t win regulatory approval. The company also agreed to pay the $2.8 billion breakup fee that WBD owed Netflix for the termination of that agreement.

“Shareholder approval marks another important milestone towards completing our acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, building on our successful equity and debt syndications and progress across regulatory approvals,” Paramount said in a statement Thursday. “We look forward to closing the transaction in the coming months and realizing the creation of a next-generation media and entertainment company that better serves both the creative community and consumers.”

Paramount and WBD have said the deal is expected to close in the third quarter, pending regulators’ sign off.

“Over the past four years, our teams have transformed Warner Bros. Discovery and returned the company to industry leadership,” WBD CEO David Zaslav said in a news release on Thursday. “Today’s stockholder approval is another key milestone toward completing this historic transaction that will deliver exceptional value to our stockholders. We will continue to work with Paramount to complete the remaining steps in this process that will create a leading, next-generation media and entertainment company.”

Top proxy advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services had recommended that shareholders accept the deal, which it said was “the result of a competitive sales process and public bidding war.”

“Further, shareholders are receiving a meaningful premium to the unaffected share price, there is a potential downside risk of non-approval, and the cash consideration provides liquidity and certainty of value to shareholders,” ISS wrote in its report. “Given these factors, support for the proposed transaction is warranted.”

While WBD shareholders voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of the deal with Paramount, per WBD’s release, they did not support the payouts to WBD’s executives.

This didn’t come as a surprise after ISS’s earlier report had advised against approving the proposed golden parachute for Zaslav as part of the deal. Zaslav’s exit package consists of hundreds of millions of dollars in severance and other stock awards tied to Paramount’s acquisition.

Since it’s a non-binding vote, however, the payments to Zaslav and other executives will still go through.

The payout — which totals more than $800 million — highlights an obscure tax rule originally designed to limit CEO pay, CNBC recently reported.

ISS called out the $500 million in proposed stock awards, as well as “a recently-added excise tax gross-up, valued at approximately $335 million,” or what’s known as the so-called golden parachute excise tax. Originally created by Congress in the 1980s, the tax was meant to limit what many considered to be massive payouts to CEOs upon a change of control or sale.

— CNBC’s Robert Frank contributed to this report.