Intro for April 16, 2026

Dear Gossips,

As Lainey mentioned, CinemaCon, the annual showing of wares for the theatrical distribution industry, is happening this week in Las Vegas. While CinemaCon is mainly about movies and Movie Stars, we can usually count on it for a little drama, like the time Olivia Wilde got served legal papers in the middle of a presentation. In a perhaps more fun for everyone way, this year’s drama revolves around, what else, the Paramount Skydance/Warner Bros. Discovery mega merger. One man stood up and said, Maybe we don’t have to take this!

That man is Richard Rushfield, the chief reporter for and editorial director of The Ankler, a Hollywood business newsletter. (If Matt Belloni’s Puck annoys you, try The Ankler.) While attending CinemaCon, Rushfield, who is a staunch banger of the “mergers are killing us” drum—and one of the only industry reporters who consistently reports on shady dealings behind the Penske Media curtain—handed out buttons that read “Block the Merger”. Following this, David Ellison pulled Paramount ads from The Ankler.

First, someone send me one of those pins. Second, the fault lines between freedom of speech and consequences have formed, but this isn’t as easy as dismissing Ellison’s retaliation as a mere consequence. Of course, as a businessman, he is not required to advertise on a platform he feels is harmful to his business. But his business is a lot different from Richard Rushfield’s business. Ellison runs a large media company which is about to get a whole hell of a lot larger. He is a literal billionaire. Richard Rushfield has a Substack. These are not equivalent things.

Ellison is using his power and money to hurt a much, MUCH smaller business. Rushfield isn’t an idiot, he probably anticipated something like this happening and decided it was worth the risk, but it’s still kind of gross watching someone with a multi-billion-dollar machine behind him throw his weight around like this. It’s not too far removed from cancelling The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. It’s a pattern with Ellison, people speak against him and he does his best to silence those people. Richard Rushfield doesn’t work for him, so he can’t fire Rushfield like he did Colbert, but he can still hurt Rushfield’s bottom line—a bottom line Rushfield lives much closer to than Ellison does.

It’s just bully behavior. And there is something galling about someone so extraordinarily rich being such a schoolyard bully. Like isn’t the money supposed to insulate you from some of this? One guy handing out pins at a conference isn’t going to stop your merger. Fine, pull your advertising, but we all see this, right? This weak ass bully behavior? There are so many things that suck about the billionaire class, but the one that really grates on me is how f-cking thin-skinned they all are.

Anyway, the ParaSkyWarnerDiscBros monster merger will probably happen, no matter who speaks out against it. Even though there are senate hearings happening, I still don’t see anyone having the political will to stop it. The politicians have all taken too much money from the exact billionaires crying into their soup about being unpopular at movie sleepaway camp. I just wish they would stop making their egos our problem.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah