Mark Ruffalo added his voice to the group urging California Attorney General Rob Bonta to reject a settlement deal in its regulatory lawsuit against Paramount Skydance’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
“Do not cave,” Ruffalo wrote, tagging Bonta in a message posted to social media. “5670 film makers put their necks on the line for you to fight this merger. Another 75,000+ and counting have signed to tell you not to concede in just 3 weeks. You work for the people — the very people who will be hurt if you let this lousy deal filled with empty promises go forward. Please sign to send a message to the AG’s and Paramount. Reject the deal. The people don’t want it!”
Ruffalo’s posts directs his followers to the website for No Paramount Concessions, which features a petition calling on the 12 states suing Paramount-Skydance to “hold the line” and block the merger. The website states that it has garnered more than 77,000 signatures.
In a later post, Ruffalo called his “friends in the Bay Area” asking them to “show up outside his AG office in Oakland tomorrow at 5 pm to reject this backroom deal.”
Ruffalo has been one of the entertainment industry’s most visible critics of Paramount’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros. In August, he voiced objections to the business relationship between Larry Ellison’s tech giant Oracle, which is backstopping more than $40 billion of the Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition, and Israel’s ongoing military activity in Gaza. The comments proved divisive, spurring Paramount to call Ruffalo’s “antisemitic” and sparking warring industry petitions, criticizing and supporting the actor.
The actor’s objections come after Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sounded the alarm on settlement talks, saying that it would be a “massive mistake to cave” and warning that a merger could create “another Trump-controlled media conglomerate.”
Paramount and California Attorney General Rob Bonta were reported Friday to be in advanced talks about a potential settlement to the latter’s lawsuit seeking to block the company’s pending $110 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger. Bonta, who is suing alongside 11 other state AGs, previously said he’s open to reaching an out of court settlement, but has called on the David Ellison-led media giant to offer structural remedies, such as divestments, rather than behavioral remedies, like its pledge to release 30 films in theaters per year.
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