Hollywood Seeking To Tank Trump-Friendly CEO’s Bid For Megamerger

Hollywood actors and filmmakers have been working to scrap Paramount Skydance’s potential $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery.

Hollywood celebrities, including actor Mark Ruffalo and filmmaker Alex Gibney, met with California Attorney General Rob Bonta seeking to convince him to scuttle the planned merger, The New York Times reported on May 26. Netflix dropped its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery in February after Paramount upped the ante and offered $31 per share, which Warner Bros. called a “superior proposal,” according to The Washington Post.

The meeting came after Democracy Defenders Fund (DDF)’s Norm Eisen, a former ambassador for the Obama administration, released a letter opposing the merger that received the signatures of over 1,000 actors, writers and directors, The New York Times reported in April.

“We have witnessed a steep decline in the number of films produced and released, alongside a narrowing of the kinds of stories that are financed and distributed,” the letter stated. “Increasingly, a small number of powerful entities determine what gets made — and on what terms — leaving creators and independent businesses with fewer viable paths to sustain their work.”

Eisen organized the meeting between Ruffalo and Bonta, according to The New York Times. “Behavioral remedies have historically proven to be hard to enforce,” Bonta said during the meeting, The New York Times reported. “We don’t want to make that same mistake again here. So it could be a block, it could be behavioral remedies backed by structural remedies. Again, we haven’t decided what we’re going to do.”