The Writers Guild of America is firing back at Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison after he threatened to start pulling Paramount out of California on Oct. 1 — unless the state’s attorney general comes to the bargaining table over an antitrust suit tied to the studio’s acquisition of Warner Bros.
“By threatening to leave the state because it doesn’t want the government to enforce the law, Paramount further proves the danger of its outsized power over the industry and what that will mean for writers and the creative community,” the WGA told Variety in a statement.
“This type of behavior is precisely why the merger should be blocked.” — The WGA on David Ellison’s threat to move Paramount out of California
A Fight Over a $110 Billion Deal
The WGA, alongside AG Rob Bonta and a coalition of 12 states, is suing to block the $110 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, arguing it violates antitrust law and would inflict irreparable harm on industry scribes. Bonta, responding to the move-out threat on X, accused Ellison of blackmail. “In a span of weeks, Paramount agreed to halt the merger until a court decision or until June 2027, asked for a November trial, and is now back with another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through,” he wrote. “Paramount has lost the plot as it continues to lose in court.”
Oct. 1 is also the day Paramount begins paying Warner Bros. shareholders a $7 billion ticking fee for every day that passes without a closed deal. With the trial set for March 2, 2027, a failure to settle could leave Paramount on the hook for more than $1 billion to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders. Ellison has argued in a New York Times op-ed that the opposition stems from his potential control over CNN, and he has publicly positioned himself as a friend of President Donald Trump, a longtime critic of the network.
Why It Matters
This is more than a studio spat — it’s a proxy fight over the future of Hollywood’s most consequential merger, with the fate of newsrooms like CNN and CBS News tangled up in the outcome. For writers, the guild argues, the deal concentrates power over an entire industry in one pair of hands. Whatever happens on Oct. 1, the clock is now loudly ticking on a merger that the WGA insists should never happen at all.
