{"id":2371303,"date":"2026-04-13T15:27:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=2371303"},"modified":"2026-04-13T15:27:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T15:27:10","slug":"hollywood-stars-voice-opposition-to-paramount-warner-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/hollywood-stars-voice-opposition-to-paramount-warner-merger\/","title":{"rendered":"Hollywood stars voice opposition to Paramount-Warner merger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>NEW YORK \u2014 More than a thousand movie stars, writers, directors and other Hollywood professionals announced their &#8220;unequivocal opposition&#8221; to the proposed Paramount merger with Warner Bros. Discovery in an open letter published Monday.<\/p>\n<p><center><\/p>\n<div class=\"keypointsbox\" style=\"text-align: left;width: 95.0%;\">\n<hr style=\"height: 2.0px;border-width: 0;background-color: rgb(4,45,77);\"\/>\n<h4 style=\"text-indent: 10.0px;\"><b>What You Need To Know<\/b><\/h4>\n<h5>\n<ul>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>A large swath of the movie industry came out forcefully against the $111 billion deal<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n<br \/>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>&#8220;The result will be fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world,&#8221; reads the letter<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n<br \/>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>In late February, David Ellison&#8217;s Paramount Skydance reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in one of the largest media mergers ever<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n<br \/>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>The deal was only the latest massive merger to rock Hollywood \u2014 in 2019, 20th Century Fox was acquired by The Walt Disney Co. for $71.3 billion<\/li>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n<\/h5>\n<hr style=\"height: 2.0px;border-width: 0;background-color: rgb(4,45,77);\"\/>\n<\/div>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n<\/center><\/p>\n<p>A large swath of the movie industry, including Denis Villeneuve, Kristen Stewart, J.J. Abrams and Joaquin Phoenix, came out forcefully against the $111 billion deal that would consolidate two legacy studios into one, arguing that it further reduce jobs and movies in an already downsized Hollywood.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The result will be fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world,&#8221; reads the letter, posted on <a rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/blockthemerger.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">BlocktheMerger.com<\/a>. &#8220;Alarmingly, this merger would reduce the number of major U.S. film studios to just four.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In late February, David Ellison&#8217;s Paramount Skydance reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in one of the largest media mergers ever. The deal awaits a shareholder vote later this month and government regulatory approval. Paramount&#8217;s victory came after months of negotiations and a rival bid by Netflix that ultimately fell short.<\/p>\n<p>The deal was only the latest massive merger to rock Hollywood. In 2019, 20th Century Fox was acquired by The Walt Disney Co. for $71.3 billion.<\/p>\n<p>Ellison, chief executive of Paramount Skydance, has pledged to keep Paramount and Warner Bros. as stand-alone movie studio operations, and vowed to release a combined 30 movies a year in theaters. Though the merger will result in considerable cuts because of duplication of roles, Paramount has contended the fusion of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery &#8220;strengthens the overall job market.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>But many in the film industry believe a merger will mean extensive job losses and a consolidation of power.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are deeply concerned by indications of support for this merger that prioritize the interests of a small group of powerful stakeholders over the broader public good,&#8221; read the letter. &#8220;The integrity, independence, and diversity of our industry would be grievously compromised.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>A coalition of advocacy groups organized the letter, including the Committee for the First Amendment \u2014 a free speech group led by Jane Fonda \u2014 as well as the Democracy Defenders Fund and the Future Film Coalition. Other signatories include: Ben Stiller, Don Cheadle, Javier Bardem, Lily Gladstone, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Tiffany Haddish and Ted Danson.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, one signee, Damon Lindelof, detailed his decision on Instagram. Lindelof, the creator of &#8220;Watchmen&#8221; and the co-creator of &#8220;Lost,&#8221; has an overall deal with Warner Bros. Discovery.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hollywood mergers mean fewer movies and fewer TV shows and that means fewer jobs,&#8221; wrote Lindelof. &#8220;When two storied backlots are owned by the same company, the outcome is intuitive \u2014 one becomes a Ghost Town. I&#8217;m scared. But I&#8217;m not a ghost. And a fight is already lost if it&#8217;s never fought.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Representatives for Paramount and Warner Bros. didn&#8217;t immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source spectrumlocalnews.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NEW YORK \u2014 More than a thousand movie stars, writers, directors and other Hollywood professionals announced their &#8220;unequivocal opposition&#8221; to the proposed Paramount merger with Warner Bros. Discovery in an open letter published Monday. What You Need To Know &#13; A large swath of the movie industry came out forcefully against the $111 billion deal [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2231760,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[22793,22694,22800,317977,22804,21796,22691,21741],"class_list":["post-2371303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-all-markets-rank-everywhere","tag-app-arts-entertainment","tag-app-for-your-consideration","tag-app-local-business","tag-associated-press","tag-business","tag-california","tag-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Paramount-takes-another-step-in-takeover-bid-of-Warner-Bros.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2371303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2371304,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2371303\/revisions\/2371304"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2231760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2371303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2371303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2371303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}