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A Senate hearing on Paramount’s massive $111 billion deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery will proceed without key player in the sale, David Ellison.
The mogul’s Paramount policy team informed Senator Cory Booker, the top Democrat on the Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, that Ellison would be unable to attend the hearing in Washington, D.C. due to an unannounced death in the family.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Ellison will not be able to be in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, as he will be attending a funeral due to the death of a family member,” Ted Liman, Paramount’s executive director of policy, wrote in a response to Booker. The studio representative refused to provide details about the circumstances of that funeral.
Lehman added: “As we discussed with you personally earlier this year and in our written statement to the Antitrust Subcommittee at your request, our view on the proposed Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery deal is quite clear: We believe the deal should be reviewed on the merits. On the merits, the deal is pro-competitive.”
In a letter sent Monday to the Paramount mogul, Booker toughened his words toward the executive in an attempt to persuade Ellison to testify. “As the leader of a company pursuing one of the largest media mergers in American history, your continued unwillingness to engage with congressional oversight is itself a matter of public concern,” the senator wrote.
Since Paramount officially entered into an agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in late February after rival Netflix dropped its offer, pressure on the deal reached fever pitch. Ellison’s team hopes to complete the deal by the end of September, while industry alliances are forming to form an opposition front.
A group of Democratic senators — Chuck Schumer, Dick Durbin, Richard Blumenthal, Mazie Hirono, Sheldon Whitehouse and Elizabeth Warren, among them — have highlighted the deal on antitrust issues. Several members of Congress also expressed concerns about Middle Eastern money from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar backing Paramount with billions to complete the deal.
“This array of foreign investments from China and Gulf states, with complex and sometimes competing relationships with the United States, requires rigorous, not routine, review,” the senators wrote in a March letter.
Also opposing the deal is Cinema United, the main lobbying organization representing major movie theater chains such as AMC, Regal and Cinemark, whose president, Michael O’Leary, called the Par-WB deal “harmful to exhibitors, consumers and the entire entertainment ecosystem” during April 14 remarks to exhibitors in Vegas at the industry conference CinemaCon.
On the grassroots side, several organizations, including the Jane Fonda First Amendment Committee, are circulating a petition that includes 1,000 prominent Hollywood names who have signed an open letter describing the deal as resulting in “fewer opportunities for creators, fewer jobs across the production ecosystem, higher costs, and fewer choices for audiences.”
Signatories include JJ Abrams, Yorgos Lanthimos, Vince Gilligan, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Glenn Close, Denis Villeneuve, Nia DaCosta and many more. This list is particularly noteworthy since the names represent hundreds of actors and directors who typically work with the Paramount and Warner Bros. franchises. In film and television projects if the deal closes.
