Mark Ruffalo Escalates Campaign Against $111B Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

Film producer Mark Ruffalo increased his efforts in the ongoing campaign against Paramount Skydance’s pending $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on Friday. He accused the Ellison family of profiting from technology tied to Israel’s military actions in Gaza. 

Taking to his Instagram handle, he reposted a clip of Oracle executive vice chair Safra Catz describing the company’s assistance to Israel following the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack.

In the clip, Catz says, “There are a few things that we did that I really can’t talk about to advance the agenda for the Israeli military. But we have some really profoundly scary technology at Oracle, and we wanted to make sure that it was available for the effort”.

Ruffalo tied Oracle directly to the pending merger, since Larry Ellison, Oracle’s executive chairman, is the father of Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and reportedly backing his son’s acquisition financially.

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“This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros. acquisition,” Ruffalo wrote.  He continued, “These ‘really profoundly scary technologies’ will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you.”

He went further in a follow-up post, writing that Catz was reveling in “what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle,” and separately urged followers to support efforts to block the deal, writing, “We have a chance to stop this.”

Ruffalo’s latest broadside comes amid a broader, months-long campaign against the merger, which is currently being challenged by roughly a dozen state attorneys general, including in California.

TheWrap reported this week that the combined company could eliminate close to 4,500 film and TV jobs in Los Angeles County over the next three years, reporting Ruffalo shared and amplified.

Paramount has previously defended the merger publicly, arguing it will strengthen the industry rather than shrink it, and has pledged $30 billion annually in content investment along with at least 30 theatrical releases a year going forward.