David Zaslav, Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters as they visited the Warner Bros. Studio lot in December.

Warner Bros. Discovery

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After driving the price tag up to chase Netflix away, David Ellison pulled off a coup in late February with a $111 billion deal for Paramount to devour Warner Bros. Discovery. Until then, criticism of the sale was on parallel tracks. Would the historic studio be better off in the hands of a streaming video giant that didn’t care about movie theaters or in the clutches of an heir to a tech billionaire with ambitions to remake the entertainment industry in the TikTok era?

With Ellison claiming victory, all of those whispers about the cons of Paramount became the sole focus. Would it be cutting a lot more jobs than Netflix? Could a combined studio actually live up to its 30 movies a year pledge? How does HBO stay HBO in a cost-cutting atmosphere? Can CBS News and CNN live under the same roof without political interference? How close, really, are the Ellisons to Donald Trump and did the President get Sarandos to back off? Can the entertainment industry really afford to lose a major studio bidder for projects in an already lean market for buyers?

This month has seen increased mobilization in Hollywood against the deal. Movie theater owners are rallying against it at CinemaCon in Vegas, Democratic congressmembers are using up all their formal stationary with strongly worded letters to Paramount’s policy team, and grassroots groups like the one led by Jane Fonda are rallying A-list names to put pen to paper to show solidarity against a deal. Would Ted Sarandos’ team have had it any easier? Two Hollywood Reporter editors have diverging views.

ERIK HAYDEN: The open letter does seem like it marks a new escalation in opposition to Paramount’s takeover of Warner Bros. and that the drumbeat has steadily been increasing from what feels like all corners of the industry aside from the dealmakers who work on this type of M&A. Alex, was this inevitable for any buyer?

ALEX WEPRIN: I think some level of pushback would have been inevitable for (almost) any buyer, but I think there were a handful of factors here that are likely making the pushback against Paramount’s deal louder, at least in terms of volume if not efficacy. The three big things I’m thinking about are:

This deal will merge two of the historic Hollywood film studios into one company, and previous mergers have not resulted in more work or better outcomes for the business. And it will merge two big TV production enterprises together. Ditto there. Plus everyone expects significant layoffs, which could mean longtime staff with talent relationships lose their jobs without any obvious landing pad.

I found very few people in Hollywood who believe that Paramount will stick to many of their promises (30 films a year, continuing to be a buyer and seller of TV, etc). Maybe they will! But there is real skepticism there, whereas aside from Netflix’s theatrical commitment (which the industry also didn’t buy), I think people understood their argument.

And then there’s the politics of it. Colbert’s ill-timed cancellation days before the FCC approved the Paramount deal, the company throwing a party honoring President Trump days before the White House Correspondents Dinner, comments from Secretary Pete Hegseth about how the sooner David Ellison takes over CNN the better. It all aligns to irk an industry that is decidedly left of center.

ERIK HAYDEN: Let’s take the first one first. Under the Netflix offer, Warner Bros. still would’ve been absorbed into the streaming giant even if Discovery spun away. Ted Sarandos had been meeting with White House officials, and Trump, and was trying to navigate a very narrow pathway to avoid drawing his ire. Ultimately, the attack line from Republicans in Congress was that Warner Bros. couldn’t be sold because Netflix was too progressive-leaning, in their view. Netflix would loom too large in the marketplace of ideas, was their narrative, vs. the nuts and bolts talk about Hollywood industry jobs. In some ways, it’s the inverse of what we’re seeing now with some Democratic senators and the Ellisons, no?

ALEX WEPRIN: I think they were raising hay about Netflix’s perceived politics, but in practice the arguments against it legally were about the biggest streaming service acquiring the third-biggest (a totally legitimate and dare I say strong antitrust argument). I agree it is somewhat inverted now, but I think that is because the opponents realize that the antitrust case is the only one that really matters. While the politics may bother them, it wont

Would Hollywood Protest a Warner Bros. Sale as Much If Netflix Had Won?