‘It will upset the balance’: How will Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros. change Hollywood? | Warner Bros

HeyOn Sunday, Warner Bros. won 11 Oscars for “One Battle After Another” and “Sinners and Arms,” ​​tying the record for the most wins for a single film studio. Paramount, by contrast, did not receive a nomination.

However, if a minnow swallows a whale, Paramount is preparing to acquire Warner Bros. in a deal worth $111 billion. If approved by regulators, the two studios will be combined into one, redrawing the map of Hollywood and sowing seeds of uncertainty for actors, directors and writers as well as millions of viewers.

Analysts warn that such a merger could lead to the loss of thousands of jobs, stifle creative innovation and, given the influence of Paramount Chairman David Ellison — whose father, Larry, is a friend and ally of Donald Trump — make it difficult to bring overtly political films such as “Battle After Battle” and “Sinners” to the screen.

“It’s a sign on the way to the destruction of Hollywood,” says David Dine, executive editor of the American Prospect magazine. “Cutting the number of studios and thus production — although Paramount claims it won’t happen, but there’s almost no way for that to be true — will upset a delicate balance that has already been destroyed by the rise of streaming and the collapse of both cable TV and the moviegoing experience.”

“If this merger actually goes through, theater owners will have a hard time staying afloat,” Dane adds. “The deal represents a big bet on a dying medium that is cable TV and is destined to fail. The fallout will not be good for Hollywood creatives, meaning a fairly long decline.”

Located on a 110-acre plot of land in Burbank, California, Warner Bros. features 31 sound stages, 11 outdoor sets and a century-old water tower that stands as a monument to Hollywood’s Golden Age. The studio has produced films including Casablanca, Rebel Without a Cause, A Clockwork Orange, The Matrix, The Dark Knight, and the Harry Potter series.

It was slated to be bought by streaming company Netflix — a prospect that raised concerns of its own — until Paramount was swept away by a hostile takeover bid. At a conference in Beverly Hills on Thursday, Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer, said the deal would be a “huge win for the creative community.”

But the film industry, which has already seen Amazon take over MGM and Walt Disney take over 20th Century Fox, knows that contraction inevitably means fewer jobs. Film production in Los Angeles has declined in recent years.

The Paramount deal relies heavily on leverage, which has created a mountain of debt estimated at about $80 billion. Executives have already announced their intention to save $6 billion by cutting “duplicate operations.” The combined workforce of Paramount and Warner Bros. currently numbers more than 53,000 employees.

Dane warns that Ellison may fire the halfling. “I don’t see any way they can do what they want without losing 25,000 jobs. And while they talk about it in terms of synergies — we have two marketing directors and now we’ll have one — the idea that this won’t impact production is laughable.

“If you get rid of half the staff at Paramount and Warner Bros., you won’t be able to produce as many shows. It’s key. That will have a huge impact on independent producers trying to bid for jobs, actors, writers, all if there’s less production.”

Beyond job losses, there is a potential contraction in opportunities. Hollywood’s creative economy is based on competition with studios vying with each other to get the next big idea. As companies eat each other up, doors simply close. The Writers Guild of America called the loss of the competition a “disaster” for writers, consumers and the entire entertainment industry.

“The more we become integrated into Hollywood, the harder it is for independent producers to survive, and the fewer places they can go to get film financing,” says Laura Friedman, who spent 20 years working as a film producer before becoming a Democratic congresswoman from California.

“If you have one set of studios or owners greenlighting more films with less diversity in terms of who says yes to producing or distributing films, then you’re certainly crowding out the most marginalized voices, the independent filmmakers, the emerging artists. And it’s certainly worse for people trying to get into the industry. It’s worse for independent filmmakers, and ultimately worse for film viewers who have much fewer options to watch.”

Screenwriters echo these concerns. “This will lead to a further trivialization and homogenization of TV and film content,” says Stanley Weiser, whose credits include Wall Street, W, and Freedom Song. “And with the profound advances that artificial intelligence is making, this will only make it more difficult for young emerging writers to get work. It’s one less fishing hole to go to — a bigger fishing hole.”

Adds Weiser, who works frequently with director Oliver Stone: “My main concern is how few socially relevant films have been made over the past 10 years, and now, with Paramount, this would be a continuing retreat into films that evade engagement with the world in general and human values. I wonder if the new Paramount Warners made one Sinners and One Battle movie after another? Would they have had the guts to do that?”“

David Scarpa, whose recent screenplays include Gladiator II and Napoleon, agrees: “If you have a project, you have fewer and fewer places you can go. It used to be that you had a bunch of studios and then you had little specialties. There were a lot of different places you could go and different ways of making a film, and now it feels like things are consolidating to the point that you’re dealing with a smaller and smaller group of companies. That limits you a little bit.”

Scarpa points to the example of Disney, which acquired 20th Century Fox. “It still exists as a brand but it’s basically just an entity within Disney. Being generally integrated into the media landscape is generally not good for creative people.”

Warner Bros. has a hot streak with blockbusters and critical successes. It arrived at the Academy Awards with 30 nominations, surpassing the previous record of 28 nominations from 1943, when Casablanca took home the award for Best Picture. Paramount films received zero.

In 2025, Warner Bros. films (including Minecraft, Superman, and Sinners) accounted for 21% of the domestic box office; Paramount’s market share was just 6%, driven largely by “Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning,” which didn’t even make the top 10.

Ellison said he wants to expand the number of syndicated films to more than 30 a year, while keeping Paramount and Warner Bros. as independent operations. But Cinema United, the trade organization that represents movie theaters, opposes the merger, and industry veterans are strongly skeptical.

Mark Harris, a Hollywood historian and author, wrote on Bluesky that “the idea of ​​a Paramount-WB merger to produce 30-40 films a year is ridiculous.” He predicted that Warner Bros. would initially become the “prestige” label within Paramount, “and then it would become the niche or streaming label. Then it would die.”

Dane of American Prospect shares this concern. “We actually saw this when Disney merged with Fox,” he says. “I think the two studios’ total production is down about 40%, and if that happens again, there won’t be enough studio product for a lot of these theaters to stay in business.”

“In terms of studio mergers, it’s always better for storytelling to have many diverse platforms,” David Simon, a TV writer and producer whose credits include The Wire and The Deuce, says via email. “The fewer buyers there are, the less will be sold or produced. Naturally, there are fewer platforms willing to risk counter-programming to what’s already popular on TV or in theaters.”

Warner Bros Discovery’s parent group owns HBO, HBO Max, CNN, TBS and Food Network, as well as the Warner Bros TV and film studios. Its merger with Paramount represents an unprecedented consolidation of television news, bringing CBS News and CNN under the roof of one company. “The sooner David Ellison takes control of that network, the better,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told CNN at a Pentagon briefing on the Iran war on Friday.

“The Warner Bros.-Paramount deal wasn’t built on entertainment; it was about 100 percent unifying the news organizations,” says Drexel Hurd, a political strategist who has worked as an actor, producer, and writer. “Netflix was willing to branch out and build more entertainment pieces out of it. And everyone who looks at that deal says, ‘Damn, we should have paid Netflix already.'”

Hurd warns that this political agenda can seep into artistic content. “What’s most troubling for everyone — actors, on-air talent, producers or anyone who works in creative fields — is how does the current administration influence the deal to where they can change how we consume information, whether it’s news or television or how scripts are written or not? Are they going to get paid to produce these things because they don’t want backlash from the administration?”

Congresswoman Friedman has similar concerns. “We’ve seen the Trump administration complain that we’re not making what they consider ‘America First’ films. We know they don’t like dissenting voices; we know they have a problem with DEI and whatever your interpretation of that is.”

“Battle After Battle” and “Sinners” are both of those things. They’re films that have a political point of view that’s at odds with Donald Trump’s point of view, and arguably, by their definition, they’re a piece of DEI art, which is certainly something that reflects the African American experience in the United States.

“Could these films have been made under Paramount? I hope so. It would be a huge loss to our country if we no longer make these kinds of films. What makes America great is that we don’t self-censor and respect provocative viewpoints. Artists do well when they can express themselves, not when they try to fit a propaganda narrative.”