Intro for July 15, 2026

Dear Gossips,

The fakakta Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger is in the news again, because of court proceedings culminating at the end of the week, so let’s check on the state of things. In short: bad! A dozen state attorneys general, including the one from California, which we will come back to, have filed for a temporary restraining order to at least pause the merger while the states’ various anti-trust lawsuits work their way through the justice system.

Which probably won’t matter anyway, because the Paramount lawyers, backed by CEO David Ellison, who is backed by his business/daddy Larry Ellison, who is a Friend of Trump, will just go to the Supreme Court for a rubber stamp. But hearings are set for the issue of the TRO and the anti-trust lawsuits, so we’ll see how that shakes out. It feels like anti-trust matters should be settled before a merger closes, but I’ve also felt like I’m taking crazy pills since this whole thing began, so what do I know? Just that the vibes are bad and getting worse.

Because the state of Tennessee, which despite Nashville and Memphis being bright blue dots, is a deep red state, is wooing David Ellison to move Paramount operations to the state. Ellison previously maintained a home in Tennessee, and Oracle, Papa Larry’s company, is planning a major campus Nashville. There is a lot of Ellison momentum in the direction of Tennessee. And it even makes a certain amount of sense, that if you’re the leaders of a state and you see a major business getting into a fight with the AG of their current home state—California is among the states with anti-trust proceedings against the merger—of course you would pitch your state as a more business-friendly place to operate (i.e., we promise not to sue you).

It’s a “stop hitting yourself” situation for the film industry. ParaSkyWarnerDance, or whatever the inevitable new entity will be called, leaving Los Angeles would be bad for the industry because it would mean the loss of thousands of office jobs for studio employees, and potentially the loss of thousands of production jobs, too, if they opt to move their production facilities to Tennessee, or anywhere not California.

But the merger is bad for the industry, too, because the new entity will be saddled with a huge amount of debt, and whatever David Ellison promises in public, at least for the foreseeable future, he cannot deliver on grandiose plans to make and release dozens of films a year, which is probably one reason the State of California rejected his proposal to produce thirty films a year if they’ll just stop blocking his merger. Someone probably ran the numbers and arrived at “he cannot deliver this”.

The industry, defined as the people who work in film and television at every level except the very tippy top where executives have vested stock options and golden parachutes, will lose either way. It was always lose-lose. Netflix was only ever the lesser of two evils because at least they want a physical production space in Los Angeles. And the politicians waited way too long to get involved, Los Angeles bled production jobs for twenty years and it only became an emergency yesterday. They should have been defending California-based production all along, now it might be too little, too late.

I believe the film industry will survive the current challenges it faces, but in the same way American automaking survived computerization and robotization in the 20^th century: what comes out the other side will be vastly different and much smaller than what we had before. An industry that once supported a robust middle class probably won’t much longer, and that’s a loss for everyone, but most especially the people who will lose their job when the merger is complete. We haven’t started facing that reality yet.

Live long and gossip,

Sarah