All is not well in liberal Hollywood. After a blue state coalition led by California essentially folded by allowing the Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. Discovery merger to proceed: several celebrities, led by actors Mark Ruffalo and Jane Fonda, voiced their displeasure at state officials for caving.
A group calling itself Block the Merger pretended they speak for “average Americans” when they lamented, “We are disappointed and angry that the interests of average Americans have been trampled to benefit oligarch billionaires,” according to Deadline.
Ruffalo portrayed the defeat in political terms, “Gavin Newsom hands huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies.”
Fonda joined in the lamentations in a statement that read, “The terms of this settlement at this moment in our nation’s history will be extraordinarily damaging. The so-called ‘independence board’ supposed to guarantee editorial independence at CNN and CBS will be appointed by Paramount’s corporate board—meaning it isn’t independent at all. On top of that, the settlement has a ‘Force Majeure’ clause stating that all its terms are void if there is a strike, labor disruptions, or an economic recession—meaning this settlement is also a union-buster.”
CBS’s actual news coverage has not changed much, but regardless, it is odd that Ruffalo and Fonda are currently busy trying to portray themselves as free speech warriors while arguing a merger should be blocked because they merely perceive Paramount’s CEO to be aligned with Trump.
Referring to her late ex-husband Ted Turner, Fonda added, “I’m glad Ted isn’t here to witness the destruction of his unique and important creation.”
Elsewhere, screenwriter Will Landman posted on X: “AG Rob Bonta a fucking coward confirmed.”
Fellow screenwriter and self-described socialist Adam McKay, formerly of Saturday Night Live, got in on the blue-on-blue feud on BlueSky by posting, “People really downplay how evil Newsom is.”
Writer and creator Mike Schur of The Office and Parks and Recreation fame also wrote on BlueSky, “By the time this merger ruins HBO, destroys WB, gets 5,000 people fired, moves production overseas, and guts the quality of the movies the new studio makes, most people will have forgotten how fast the AGs caved and how little they got in this deal. Writers will not.”
If Schur is really worried about production moving out of California and the concessions offered by Paramount to address those concerns aren’t good enough, perhaps he should take it up with the state’s Democratic leaders.
But speaking of writers, the Writers Guild of America lamented, “Now that the Attorneys General have settled with Paramount, however, as a nonprofit, the WGA must contend with the reality of forging ahead alone, with no backing from government enforcers, with a complex antitrust lawsuit that would cost millions of dollars to pursue through trial.”
Not everyone in Hollywood was running around as if the sky were falling. By contrast, the Screen Actors Guild was more supportive.
Earlier in the year, Block the Merger put out a letter with over 5,700 signatories that included Alyssa Milano, Ben Stiller, Cynthia Nixon, Edward Norton, Elliot Page, Emma Thompson, Jim Acosta (yes, that Jim Acosta), JJ Abrams, Joaquin Phoenix, John Leguizamo, Kathy Griffin, Kevin Bacon, Robert de Niro, and Rosie O’Donnell, just to name a few.
