California AG’s block of Paramount-Warner Bros. – Business News
The lawsuit to block Paramount Skydance’s $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery may push back a key source of funds for California’s Democratic Party — specifically, the deep-pocketed executives who run Big Media, The Post has discovered.
Most of the employees on this ecosystem — the administrators, screenwriters, stagehands and the reporters on the corporations that mix leisure with information gathering (like Warner, Paramount, Disney and Comcast), you identify it — far outnumber the honchos and are dependable Democrats. But the actual money for financing campaigns — and Dem coffers on the national degree as nicely — comes from the highest.
All of that would change, I’m informed, since California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a group of lefty AGs filed go well with to interrupt up Paramount’s WBD deal. Specifically, media and leisure moguls, — many of them on Bonta’s home turf in Hollywood — are calling for the AG to achieve a settlement with Paramount Skydance chief David Ellison, in response to sources.
The Paramount Pictures water tower is seen with the Hollywood signal within the distance on December 18, 2025, in Los Angeles. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
It’s the rationale why you hear more mainstream state Dems calling for a settlement as nicely. To be clear, it isn’t as a result of of any great love for Ellison, the upstart film producer who, with the help of billionaire father Larry Ellison’s bank account, has been gobbling up ever-larger media giants for the previous three years.
Rather, it’s pure self-interest — survival, really. These execs see the writing on the wall: wire chopping is eating away at income and revenues from cable bundles. People go to the flicks much less — far much less — and streaming companies are a robust business, too. Meanwhile, Big Tech is looming with troves of money amassed from devices, social networks and engines like google to fuel enlargement into leisure.
In different phrases, media and leisure need to consolidate as a result of their survival is in peril — that’s, except you need Amazon, Apple or tech-heavy streaming giant Netflix proudly owning all the viewing world (how’s that for antitrust).
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The truth is, combining smaller corporations like Paramount and Warner is the take a look at case for survival in a business the place Big Media and Entertainment are hobbled by stability sheets impaired by debt and lack of scale.
Or as one high media government — a longtime Democrat — put it: “If this one guy [Bonta] can stop a deal like this, it’s game over for the industry. Why would we support this?”
Wary of far-left tilt
Granted, I haven’t performed a correct survey on this thesis with scientific markers and percentage-point margins of error. I did, nevertheless, put in a bunch of calls to dependable sources who know this terrain nicely. What they inform me is that the standard media government isn’t the DSA voter Bonta appears to be interesting to. These are people who can be snug with Bill (or Hillary) Clinton, and Barack Obama when he indulged the centrist aspect of his ID.
The Warner Bros. Water Tower is pictured at Warner Bros. Studios on February 27, 2026, in Burbank, California. REUTERS
The sources are progressive primarily round social points, don’t thoughts paying some of these high taxes to stay in Cali, however are growing cautious of the far-left tilt of the occasion. The homeless scenario in LA and different California cities is a issue. The inept governance of politicians like LA Mayor Karen Bass is one other. On high of all of it, lower-cost venues with out infinite homeless encampments are offering incentives to shoot films on their turf.
Yes, the insiders’ largest issues contain economics. And now a bunch of rising lefty Dem pols like Bonta are appearing purely politically, seemingly clueless about one of the state’s largest companies, using some 700,000 people and producing $70 billion in tax revenues every year.
The pure- politics fear from the Hollywood C-suite comes from its legal counsel, who see no benefit — like zero — in Bonta’s declare that customers can be screwed by the merging of these corporations and that by breaking up the merger, jobs one way or the other can be preserved.
Without consolidation, the Warner studio faces uncertainty given its debt load and lack of scale. Ditto for Paramount except David Ellison can persuade his dad to keep feeding his ambitions as a result of its core business is even more troubled than WBD’s.
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They all consider Bonta desires to be governor, sees his opening within the state’s progressive wing, and is utilizing the case to gain identify recognition — and do a little Trump bashing as a result of of Larry Ellison’s friendship with the president.
As they’ve identified, the lawsuit places Bonta and his crew of recalcitrants, which incorporates NY AG Tish James, to the left of the European Union and the UK regulatory equipment, some of the least deal-friendly sorts on the planet.
And they’re making their voices heard. That’s why you hear present California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the frontrunner to switch him, Xavier Becerra, calling for Bonta to enter settlement talks. That’s why all these of us, albeit quietly, are supporting David Ellison’s menace to take Paramount out of California to a place that truly desires the industry to outlive, except Bonta will get affordable and drops his calls for for spinning off huge items of Warner as the price of doing a deal.
The wager in Hollywood is that stress on Bonta will prevail and there can be a settlement. Still, in the event you’re enjoying Kalshi or Polymarket on this one, additionally do not forget that this isn’t Clinton’s or Obama’s Democratic Party.
