Mark Ruffalo lambasted the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger, eviscerating Larry and David Ellison over their business ties and accusing the family of profiting from systems he says have contributed to the “genocide” in Gaza.
“We have a chance to stop this,” the actor wrote Friday on Instagram, urging support for industry efforts to block the deal.
“This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros. acquisition,” the actor wrote, pointing to a video of Safra Catz, executive vice chair of Larry Ellison’s Oracle, flexing that the company’s “profoundly scary technologies” advanced the Israeli agenda against Palestinians following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks three years ago.
“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,” Ruffalo continued. “Look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”
On a previous slide of Ruffalo’s Instagram story, the actor shared the full clip of Catz’s remarks.
“There’s a few things that we did that I really can’t talk about to advance the agenda for the Israeli military,” Catz said. “But we have some really profoundly scary technology at Oracle and we wanted to make sure that it was available for the effort. Let’s just say that, OK?”
In the same post, Ruffalo continued his crusade against the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger over concerns for how it would affect Hollywood jobs. TheWrap exclusively reported earlier this week that the merger could result in the loss of nearly 4,500 film and TV jobs in Los Angeles County over the next three years when the two companies combine their operations. Ruffalo personally shared our reporting Thursday on X.
“Larry Ellison will own most of ‘Para Bros,’” Ruffalo wrote Friday. “Larry is a classic Oligarch. They are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance. We have a chance to stop this. There are 12 state Attorneys General suing to block this merger. It will be catastrophic for our film industry.”
He concluded: “There will be a loss of 4,500 direct film making jobs and the loss of another 10k ancillary jobs. Merger like this are almost always bad for workers, consumers, and the industry they tend to dominate. It’s a classic antitrust case. It will hike up the cost of cable and flatten out competition. This means less choice for our audiences. It also concentrates an enormous amount of creative control to companies that say and do things like this strange woman from Oracle. Really profoundly scary people.”
Paramount did not immediately return TheWrap’s request for comment.
