The ParaBros Backlash: Threats To Leave L.A. & An AG Who Won’t Back Down Divide Hollywood

Paramount’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery has evoked a range of emotions in Hollywood, mainly fear among creatives at the planned merger of two major studios. But now that uncertainty is tinged with panic after CEO David Ellison threatened to relocate his Los Angeles-based company to Tennessee, Texas, or Georgia.

Separately, the risks of both companies floating in limbo for the better part of a year as an antitrust suit by 12 state attorneys general wends its way to a March 2027 trial date have started to sink in. This has led to a divided Hollywood, with key guilds, trade groups, and exhibitors, as well as politicians, now urging Paramount and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to settle, even as many remain opposed to the merger.

Those proposed concessions are ‘behavioral,’ Bonta has said. Promises, even in writing, aren’t the ‘structural’ remedies, like asset sales, needed to preserve competition in markets the lawsuit claims are at risk. The situation has become increasingly complex, with a stream of sometimes confusing statements suggesting concessions to make the deal more palatable.