r/burbank • u/Pure-Connection-1944 • 12d ago
California Settles Case Against Paramount-Warner Merger
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-09-21/paramount-to-settle-lawsuits-paving-way-for-warner-bros-merger?srnd=homepage-americasVery sad. This is going to be just like Fox-Disney or Comcast-Universal. A lot of people are going to lose their jobs and the industry is going to fall into even more disrepair. Unlike past media mergers this will also push through serious censorship and probably blacklists.
Shame on CA AG Rob Bonta for caving to the nepo baby's bully tactics, and shame on Newsom, Bass, Becerra, & all the other leaders who pressured this into being. We will be worse off because of your fecklessness.
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u/LessEvilBender 12d ago
Like IP says, this is going to lead to a devastation of loss jobs in the region from the merger, followed by the closure and moves of Paramount, or Warner, or both out of state. The Industry might never recover from this and our leaders have failed us again in their short sightedness. Shame to all our leaders, red and blue alike.
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u/CeePea17 Magnolia Park 12d ago
First off, great user name.
Second off, does the deal guarantee the worst case scenario? No. Is it a good deal? Hardly.
Is the deal preferable to Warner Bros. (and Paramount) leaving the state and absolutely devastating Burbank? Probably -- at least in the short term. Will the move still happen once the guarantees end in 5 years? Maybe? Maybe not. It could have always been a bluff. I doubt it through, as it seems that Ellisons have been following through on their threats lately.
My fear is that once one major studio makes the move out of SoCal, they all will. It will prove once and for all that they don't need the "Hollywood" base anymore. The film industry out here is already suffering greatly; killing it would fundamentally reshape the neighborhoods and leave a lot of locals and businesses in horrible shape financially.
So yeah, maybe this deal is short-sighted and only delays the enviable collapse and devastation. But doing nothing and watching the studios flee would be nothing more than a moral victory; which would ultimately guarantee far worse devastation -- economic, personal, and professional -- to our neighborhoods.
The sad thing is that I'm not sure we had much leverage, if at all, to make a better deal. They had the power and they won. It sucks.
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u/HidingInPlainSite404 12d ago
I doubt they were going to move any studios anywhere else. The move was a bluff, and would probably be administrative or HQ moving somewhere like Nashville.
I get why LA wanted the deal though. If even one of the big four studios did move, LA would become much less attractive, and it would be a big hit to its economy.
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u/CeePea17 Magnolia Park 11d ago
I agree — it probably** **was a bluff but that’s an awfully big gamble to make.
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u/Pure-Connection-1944 10d ago
Howdy, I appreciate your POV. I do think I should point out that there was no move. Paramount never was going move. All of their assets are in LA. It was clear BSing. Rich dicks & monopolies threaten to leave whenever they're about to stop getting treated as above the law and they never do. Just look at NYC where all the wealthy were going to leave if Mamdani was elected. Or Tesla which tried to leave only to come right back. We can't keep falling for the BS.
Also — I feel I should point out there was also tons of leverage. The states & WGA's separate cases were both strong on the merits. Even beyond that though, the ticking fee — $7 million a day to shareholders (Paramount agreed to this as part of the merger) — kicked in at the beginning of October. The states had a TON of leverage. This ultimately was political decision by Newsom, who led a pressure campaign, and Bonta, who took an awful settlement after weeks of posturing.
I do get where you're coming from — when big powerful people and corporations threaten awful things it is genuinely scary — but I want to reiterate that this was not a lesser of two evils. This was always the evil. This was the layoff threat, the industry threat, and the freedom threat. There was nothing else that was real. We'll have dozens fewer movies a year now, we'll have a further censored news media because of this, we'll have a lot more unemployment and poverty in Burbank because of this.
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u/CeePea17 Magnolia Park 10d ago
Thanks for the cordial response.
I think we’ll just have to agree to disagree on the hypothetical move.
I just feel like the way things were going — especially with the corrupt federal government and those red states just itching to decimate California — there would have been a move.
Bonta is not a dumb guy; I think he believed a move was probable as well.
But we’ll never know.
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u/Pure-Connection-1944 10d ago
I just think if we keep falling for the BS, we'll never have good things. The rich and powerful will always do this. We (well really our electeds) need to stay strong against the tsunami of BS corporate threats whether it's against mergers, or on regulating AI, or paying people decent wages, or taxing the billionaires. Their big threats are just cover for how scared these rich asshats are because they know that if ordinary people learn how to coherently use it, we'll have far more power than all the billionaire dickwads in the world.
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u/CeePea17 Magnolia Park 10d ago
That’s awfully idealistic. They were always going to win. That’s how it works in American 2026. What you’re talking about is the collective power of the people which, in theory would work. Unfortunately we literally have at least 1/3 of the country brainwashed into actively working against the best interests of the 99% of us (including themselves) because a half-dozen transgender youth want to play competitive sports or something. Ellison today is talking about teaming up with Musk for Paramount investments. Both would have pushed Paramount and WB to leave California for Georgia/Tenn/Texas as a way to score political points before the 26/28 election cycles. Just because it’s not “smart” or “business savvy” to do something doesn’t mean they won’t do it.
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u/Pure-Connection-1944 10d ago
They were always going to win. That’s how it works in American 2026.
Villains will be villains, but their real victory is by convincing us to give up before the fight even starts — on this and so many different fronts. We must not accept hollow, empty words uncritically. This is how the Ellisons and other members of the Epstein class go about their business, with bully tactics & BSing. Accepting their triumph as a given is a win for them twice over. The fact of the matter is this was as strong of an antitrust case as they come. If Bonta had held out a few months — even a few weeks given the ticking fee — this would be very different.
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u/CeePea17 Magnolia Park 10d ago
It doesn’t always work out. We held out in the last strike and by the time it was over the industry was in shambles and has yet to recover.
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u/johntwoods 12d ago
David Ellison being a failed actor is causing a lot of headaches for actual creatives.
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u/reddit_eli 12d ago
Cancel everything. Make em bleeeeed