Mark Ruffalo is not done fighting the biggest studio merger in Hollywood history.
Hours after U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin signed off on the settlement between Paramount Skydance and a coalition of 12 state attorneys general, clearing the way for the roughly $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, Ruffalo took to social media with a statement that pulled no punches.
"This merger will stifle creativity, weaken free speech, and cost people their jobs," the two-time Emmy winner wrote. "It is a bad deal for this country and should never have been approved."
The judge's approval removes the last legal obstacle standing between David Ellison's Paramount and its absorption of Warner Bros. Discovery, a deal now expected to close as early as Tuesday, October 6. If it does, one company will control Paramount Pictures, CBS, HBO, CNN, the DC Universe, and a century of film and television libraries.
Ruffalo has been the most visible face of the opposition all summer. In August he warned that the deal would hand "one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros." He publicly urged California Attorney General Rob Bonta not to settle, pointing to 5,670 filmmakers who put their names on the line and more than 75,000 petition signers demanding the attorneys general hold firm. He was joined by Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Joaquin Phoenix, Javier Bardem, Ilana Glazer, and Noah Wyle on an open letter warning that the merger would mean fewer jobs, higher costs, and less choice for audiences.
The settlement extracted modest concessions: 30 theatrical releases per year in the U.S., a five-member panel to protect the editorial independence of CNN and CBS, and a $1.5 billion commitment to domestic production over five years secured by California. The Writers Guild of America, which filed its own lawsuit, settled separately last week.
For actors, the stakes are concrete. Every merger shrinks the number of buyers in the room. Fewer studios greenlighting projects means fewer roles, less competition for talent, and less leverage at the negotiating table. When two historic employers become one, the people who feel it first are the working actors, writers, and crews whose options just got narrower.
Ruffalo, for his part, says the campaign is only changing shape. "This is an incredibly disappointing outcome for the hundreds of thousands of us who stood up to block it, but it's also not the end," he wrote. "This grassroots movement isn't going to fade away and neither is our resolve. This was never about just one merger: this was about fighting back against corrupt oligarch billionaires trampling the interests of everyday people to line their own pockets. We're still in that fight. Join us."
Photo: Mark Ruffalo in 2017 by Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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