4,500 filmmaking jobs and another 10,000 in related roles, 14,500 positions in total, are the scale of harm Mark Ruffalo attributed to the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery merger in an Instagram post Saturday. Paramount Skydance did not dispute those figures. It disputed the framing that surrounded them, accusing the actor of invoking antisemitic tropes to advance what the company called a business dispute.
Ruffalo's post identified Oracle as the funding vehicle for David Ellison's proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, and trained its harshest language on Oracle founder Larry Ellison, whom the actor branded a "classic Oligarch." Ruffalo reposted video of Safra Catz, a Paramount board member, speaking about technologies Oracle supplied to the Israeli military after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. Catz called those tools "really profoundly scary technologies." Ruffalo applied that description to the deal, writing that it would amount to what he characterized as genocide "built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle." He added that those same technologies would likely "one day" be deployed against ordinary viewers once folded into a major media conglomerate. Ruffalo also argued the merger would consolidate wealth among a small group of elites and harm workers across the film industry.
Paramount's rebuttal
A Paramount spokesperson, as quoted by Variety, called that framing a problem. Applying words like "genocide" and "apartheid" to a corporate transaction is wrong and "a bridge too far," the spokesperson said, with such language cheapening "the very real suffering those words are meant to describe." The company said it does not "tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone."
Curtis Houck, managing editor at the Media Research Center's NewsBusters, told Fox News Digital the rebuke was warranted. Houck described Ruffalo's post as a "serious anti-Semitic smear," citing what he characterized as specific claims about Oracle wielding "mythical powers to team up with the world's only Jewish state to supposedly commit genocide." Because Paramount Skydance is seen as "one of the bad guys in the eyes of the left," Houck said, Ruffalo would face little sustained pressure from the press.
The merger already faces a legal challenge from 12 state attorneys general who have sued to block it. Fox News Digital contacted Ruffalo's representatives and received no reply before publication.