Mark Ruffalo

Proud that New York is one of 12 states suing to stop Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. This is not a merger that serves the public. It would hand one company nearly a third of the movies and cable channels Americans watch, raise prices for streaming and cable, endanger the livelihoods of thousands of New York artists and entertainment workers, and threaten to shutter theaters across our city. New York's workers helped build this industry. They should not be sacrificed for the sake of further corporate consolidation.

The Nexstar people tried this gambit during the TEGNA merger and asked for $150 million bond. The judge granted one for $10k. So... unlikely?

The DOJ just approved Paramount’s bid to buy Warner Brothers Discovery. This is not the end, not by a long shot: The European authorities, the UK authorities, and most importantly 10 American state attorney generals (both Democrats and Republicans) are all actively looking at the deal right now. I still think it will be blocked. But in the meantime, some thoughts on the DOJ’s analysis: (1) The merger would combine the second and fifth largest film studios in the country. They will load the combined company down with $79 billion in debt, which they will need to service while they are trying to cut $6 billion in “synergies.” Mind you, Paramount/Skydance just laid off 2400 people last year when Skydance bought Paramount. It is painfully obvious that the combined Paramount/WBD will struggle to keep up its pace of high quality theatrical releases. (Indeed, what's most likely is that the merged firm starts releasing AI slop, re-releasing old movies, or re-releasing old movies with new AI slop.) The DOJ just doesn’t see it. (2) The DOJ also appears to be unaware of the market for documentaries, which has three major buyers: CNN, HBO, and Netflix -- and Netflix mostly buys crime, celebrity, and cult docs. Gone is Showtime and gone is MTV films; PBS/CPB have had their budgets existentially slashed. When it comes to documentary, this is a three-to-two merger to duopoly. That's on the buying side. On the inputs side, there are four key TV news archives in the United States: ABC, NBC, CBS, and the crown jewel, CNN. This merger will make it three. And if public reporting is correct, it will result in two of the four archives being under the control of one person, Bari Weiss. The DOJ sees none of this either. (3) President Trump’s closest ally in organized labor is Teamsters General President Sean O’Brien. He warned that this merger “threatens the livelihoods of the very workers who built these studios into industry giants.” The Teamsters’ Motion Picture Division director, Lindsay Dougherty, called the merger yet another example of “greed-fueled consolidation of corporate power [that] is a direct threat to good union jobs.” The DOJ didn’t see this problem either. They relegated their analysis of labor markets to four sentences at the end of the statement. According to them, they see no impact on output and hence no impact on labor. (4) Paramount’s leaders have lavished the President with gifts, censorship of his critics, and with promises of future censorship of his critics. They gutted CBS News and 60 Minutes. According to the Wall Street Journal, they also promised to gut CNN. They canceled Stephen Colbert. They held a strange, lavish banquet in honor of the White House and “the First Amendment” at a federal building — and the President and the Acting Attorney General joined them. The President even said he “would be involved” in the decision of merger approval. And so he was. Do not look away from this corruption. Do not act like it's normal. Because this is how we got to this result today.

The merger of Warner Bros and Paramount is not a done deal and remains under investigation by my office.