What Isn't Being Said about the Paramount-WBD Merger
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V for Vendetta (Warner Bros, 2005)
There’s one thing the media isn’t telling you about the proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery: What you can do to stop it.
While there’s rightfully been much reporting on the pain this will cause filmmakers, producers, crew-people, and executives ranks in massive layoffs and reduced production slates, and the dangers of its massive consolidation of right-wing media power, it’s important to note the merger is not a fait accompli—and still requires regulatory approval that both State Attorney Generals and the filmmaking community can work to obstruct.
Certainly, it will be more difficult to stop than it was with Netflix. For one, the FCC is already on board with Paramount’s Ellison family (who are friends with warmongering totalitarians Trump and Netanyahu), and Republican oversight committee members’ concerns about job losses (during the Netflix talks) have now evaporated into thin air. Because PSKY-WBD isn’t as massive as a Netflix/WBD would have been, it sounds like European regulators—once seen as a hurdle—will also eventually give it a pass, according to reports over the weekend. And considering the record, our capitalistic overlords are all for monolithic control if it means increased shareholder value—look at the two companies we’re talking about (PSKY & WBD), which are themselves the results of recent mergers.
So now it’s up to filmmakers, producers, actors, executives, agents, exhibitors, and everyone else who cares about keeping your jobs and freedom of expression to step into the fray and make some noise. For most readers of this Substack, I would expect that Block the Merger is not new to you, but now—and I mean really, like this week or next week, very soon because we’re running out of time!—go to the site, sign up, and start actively working for the cause.
Today, Monday, March 2, Block the Merger affiliate organizations such as the Future Film Coalition and Art House Convergence are speaking with staffers on Capitol Hill and they need your stories as evidence to show how the merger will be bad for their constituents. Were you effected by the PSKY merger? The WBD merger? Or just rampant media consolidation? Record 5-minute videos about the following and upload to Block the Merger today:
How media consolidation has created fewer buyers and distribution opportunities.
Put downward pressure on budgets, rates, or resources.
Reduced or restricted access to audiences.
Lead to editorial interference or forms of censorship.
Loss of long-term revenue.
As members of the film community, there are lots of reasons to do this. But to put it succinctly, as Dade Hayes reported in Deadline, in order for Paramount to pay down its debt in its expensive acquisition of WBD, “billions of costs will be cut, likely resulting in untold thousands of layoffs.”
The WGA also released a statement: “The loss of competition would be a disaster for writers, consumers and the entire entertainment industry. This merger must be blocked.”
But the consequences of the merger go beyond simple job losses. Block the Merger has a nifty list, of which some of the most compelling points I've reiterated below:
Fewer Choices and Fewer Stories — When big media companies merge, there are fewer places for films to be bought or shown.
Lower Pay and Less Career Sustainability — As companies get bigger and competition shrinks, budgets go down, resulting in less pay. Fewer productions also mean fewer chances for people to build lasting careers in film and TV.
Local Theaters and Film Festivals at Risk — Fewer companies and productions can limit indie exhibitors’ ability to access films that help keep their doors open.
Disappearing Productions — After recent mergers, companies have cancelled productions, shelved, or buried films and TV shows.
Less Creative Freedom — When media ownership is concentrated, companies are more likely to avoid stories that feel risky, challenging, or controversial. I’ve written specifically about this before in relation to Corporate Media’s erasure of Palestinian and other political voices (“Corporate Media Consolidation Further Squashes Political Films,” Oct. 28, 2025).
Indeed, Paramount has already transformed its recent acquisition CBS into a right-wing MAGA-adjacent news network, gutting “60 Minutes” stories and undermining truth as a reporting mandate. What will they do to CNN? Paramount has also doubled-down on its dumb and tired blockbuster franchises, prioritizing the likes of “America First” Transformers, G.I. Joe and Top Gun movies (I hate to tell them it’s not the go-go Reagan ‘80s anymore). With its running of Warner Bros studios, it could neuter one of the most risk-taking studios out there.
This is a Hollywood company with an impressive history of bold entertainment: Not only “Sinners” this year, but also “One Battle After Another” and “Weapons,” and going back further, such ground-breaking originals and creative reboots as “Mad Max: Fury Road,” “The Matrix,” “Zodiac,” and giving Christopher Nolan the keys to the castle for “The Dark Knight,” “Inception,” and “Interstellar.” Perhaps not as famous, but I’ll never forget coming out of a press screening of “V for Vendetta” in 2006, gobsmacked that a major American media corporation would have backed such an unabashedly pro-revolutionary Antifa film, which I called at the time “the first true anarchist movie Hollywood has ever made.”
Slate film critic Sam Adams echoed the sentiment recently on social media: “If Paramount eats Warner Bros, expect fewer PTAs and Cooglers and Gyllenhaals getting big-swing budgets, more jobbing screenwriters competing to see who can write the best 51% of a tentpole about action figures no living soul cares about.”
We don’t know for certain, of course, whether Paramount will send Ryan Coogler packing, but we do know that a newly merged PSKY-WBD will be hemorrhaging money, so it’s pretty damn well likely they’ll be opting for Optimus Prime and Maverick over Smoke and Stack.
What else can you do?
Call your State Attorney General Offices. According to The American Prospect, “It’s not unprecedented for states to challenge a merger without the federal government—Washington state blocked the Kroger-Albertsons merger in 2024 in a separate trial from the FTC, and states (unsuccessfully) challenged the Sprint merger with T-Mobile when the first Trump administration wouldn’t go after it. But they need to have documents or witness testimony, and they need to put it all together, with limited windows into Paramount and Warner Bros.’ business, within about a month.”
So the clock is ticking, folks.
Remember, this is not a done deal. As Matt Stoller of the American Economic Liberties Project recently discussed at a Media Consolidation Teach-In (you can watch it on YouTube), the Sherman Anti-Trust Act is still in effect. And was put in place, as he says, quoting a famous anti-trust case, “to put an end to great aggregations of capital because of the helplessness of the individual before them.”
But we are not helpless. As director Raoul Peck said during a private event late last year, recently reported in Documentary Magazine, the filmmaking community “must act not only as artists but as organized citizens.”
“Freedom of expression is not a personal privilege; it is a public contract, and today, that contract is being rewritten by others. We must resist the temptation of silence,” he said. “We can protect one another. We can create emergency funds and legal defense networks for filmmakers under threat. We can demand that platforms and institutions stop hiding behind ‘neutrality’ when faced with threats and repression. We can build bridges, between artists and journalists, between educators and audiences, to keep truth circulating, even when the air grows toxic.”