When Warner Bros. Discovery investors approved Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition offer last month, it seemed like the latest chapter in a story of corporate consolidation in Hollywood and the American media that’s been in full force since the 1980s. This chapter includes the potential end of one of the great movie studios, as well as putting CNN under the same roof as the now imperiled CBS News. But despite appearances, the end of this story hasn’t been written. This time, there’s real opposition to this kind of corporate consolidation — and a blueprint for how to win.
In 2023 the two of us, one a Hollywood actor and the other an antimonopoly policy analyst, met on a Zoom call during the Writers Guild strike. We came together because we recognized the root cause of the strike: A handful of corporations were swallowing an entire industry and leaving those who work in it worse off. Netflix, Amazon and Disney were accumulating power, combining their production capacity with their enormous distribution platforms to form what could quickly become the kind of oligopolistic entities not seen in Hollywood in decades.
On that Zoom call, we talked about the consequences of consolidation for the people who make movies and TV, as well as for audiences. Mark had starred in “I Know This Much Is True,” a 2020 mini-series about how America treats mental illness, and we both wondered: Would a show like that still be made if an entity like HBO, which will come under Paramount’s control as part of this merger, were no longer free to take these kinds of creative risks?
The same question applies to “Spotlight,” the Oscar-winning movie about corruption and pedophilia in the Catholic Church, which was produced by an independent studio. Competition and opportunities for brave storytelling are intrinsically related, and we both knew that having lots of competitive outlets to produce art and lots of paths to distribute it helps to ensure that riskier, more controversial films and TV shows keep getting made.
When we spoke, Mark, like a good organizer, kept asking, “What’s the plan?” At the time, there wasn’t one. Now there is.
It is straightforward: Convince state attorneys general to do what President Trump’s antitrust enforcers likely will not, and block the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. on antitrust grounds.
After that? Go on the offensive and work to break up the studio streaming system that is stultifying Hollywood.
This plan is already in motion. Within weeks of Paramount winning the bidding war for Warner Bros., we helped bring together a loose coalition of civil society groups, unions and actors, and this coalition enlisted over 1,000 artists to sign an open letter indicating our support of state attorneys general efforts to block the takeover. Many more subsequently added their voices, and the letter now has nearly 5,000 signatories.
But the most revealing thing about that letter wasn’t the people who signed. It was the people who didn’t. Not because they disagreed — because they were afraid.
There are many reasons to block this deal, but we now believe the most fundamental one is what we encountered when asking artists to use their voices: fear. A deep, ugly and pervasive fear of speaking out.
We heard time and time again from artists, when asked to sign this letter, that they supported it but were afraid of retribution. Their fear is not unjustified. When the editorial director of The Ankler, one of the last independent trade magazines, who also founded the publication and serves as one of its columnists, was seen at an event carrying a bag of “Block the Merger” buttons, Paramount reportedly pulled its advertising in response. (The editorial director, Richard Rushfield, was among the letter’s signatories, but said he was not handing out the buttons.) One of us, Mr. Ruffalo, was suggested as a guest for a CNN discussion of the merger, but a producer later said that the network had decided to pass on the segment, and reportedly told the organizers behind the letter, “It’s a delicate subject for us at CNN given Warner Bros. Discovery is our parent company, and there are legal considerations around what we can and cannot cover or say while the merger is ongoing.” (A CNN spokesperson later said that “no one advised any editorial employee at CNN not to pursue this story.”) This merger will cause many harms in Hollywood, but one is already in effect: People are afraid to say what they think about their own industry.
While this particular merger involves Hollywood, this fear of speaking out is something many in America already know. In 2019, Representative David Cicilline, then leading an investigation into Big Tech, noted that smaller firms’ reliance on the giants for access to consumers “makes them concerned about raising their voice, raising concerns about the monopoly power of these platforms.” The most notorious monopoly in America, Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, has a track record of alleged coercion.
David Ellison, the leader of Paramount, has said that if this merger is allowed, he will provide artists with more avenues for work. But we should know better than to trust promises by the ultrarich. After Disney bought Fox in 2019, the combined entity released far fewer movies than it did before the companies merged. Time Warner has been sold twice in just the last 10 years — once to AT&T and once to Discover — and each deal was followed by layoffs and price hikes. If this deal goes through, the consequences for the entertainment industry could be catastrophic, with thousands more workers laid off. Employment in film and TV in Los Angeles has already dropped by 30 percent over the past four years.
Hollywood has long put out important truth-telling films, from “All the President’s Men” to the documentary “Citizenfour.” Some of the most celebrated films and TV shows — such as “The Godfather,” “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” — explored daring, controversial themes. Much of this content was created when film and TV functioned through open markets involving separate studios, exhibitors and distributors. After the industry allowed widespread consolidation, streaming companies began to take over. If a studio like Warner Bros. ceases to exist as an independent entity, we will lose yet another company to fund, produce and distribute that kind of art.
There’s good news, though. It comes in the form of a word that reliably counteracts fear: solidarity.
When over 4,000 artists are willing to sign a letter encouraging state attorneys general to block the merger — and more are signing every day — that matters. When elected leaders, from the California attorney general Rob Bonta to Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Mayor Zohran Mamdani of New York start speaking out, holding hearings and starting investigations, that matters, too.
We also have an existing blueprint for success to thwart this merger. After the federal government approved a merger between Nexstar and Tegna, two affiliate station conglomerates, a bipartisan group of state enforcers challenged the combination and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the deal. A jury recently found that Live Nation, which owns Ticketmaster, acts an illegal monopoly, and another jury decided against Meta and Google in a case about social media addiction.
The oligarchs are still in charge. But they are starting to lose their grip on power.
We’ve seen what happens when monopoly-leaning companies benefit from a fear that silences dissent. But our growing coalition is demonstrating that when we don’t get stuck on the sidelines, don’t bow down to inevitability and join together to fight, we can win.
And who knows? If we can defeat the oligarchs trying to seize control of our TV shows and movies, maybe we can do it elsewhere, too.
Mark Ruffalo is an actor. Matt Stoller is the director of research at the American Economic Liberties Project, the publisher of the newsletter “Big,” about monopolistic concerns, and the author of “Goliath: The 100-Year War Between Monopoly Power and Democracy.”
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected].
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.
The post This Hollywood Merger Can, and Should, Be Stopped appeared first on New York Times.
