Mark Ruffalo Decries Paramount Job Losses, Says Anti-Merger Movement Won’t “Fade Away”

Mark Ruffalo wants to Hulk smash the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger.

The Marvel actor slammed the deal after a federal judge cleared the final hurdle for the settlement of an antitrust lawsuit brought by a group of state attorneys general on Wednesday.

The move clears the way for Paramount to absorb Warner Bros. Discovery, creating a newly combined megastudio under David Ellison, son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz. The merger is expected to result in industry layoffs and reduced competition.

“This merger will stifle creativity, weaken free speech, and cost people their jobs — it is a bad deal for this country and should never have been approved,” Ruffalo wrote on X. “This is an incredibly disappointing outcome for the hundreds of thousands of us who stood up to block it, but it’s also not the end. This grassroots movement isn’t going to fade away and neither is our resolve. This was never about just one merger: this was about fighting back against corrupt oligarch billionaires trampling the interests of everyday people to line their own pockets. We’re still in that fight. Join us.”

Ruffalo was one of many celebrities fighting to halt the merger, a list that also includes other progressive Hollywood figures like Jane Fonda, Joaquin Phoenix, Noah Wyle, and Ben Stiller.

Previously, Ruffalo drew criticism for a writing a post highlighting Oracle’s ties to the Israeli military. The post inspired Paramount to fire back at Ruffalo. “We are, as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute,” the Paramount rep stated. “Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”

In approving the settlement, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin wrote that the $111 billion deal “represents a reasonable factual and legal resolution of the dispute” and stressed that the settlement includes backstops requiring divestment of studios and cable channels if the combined company fails to comply with the deal.

Under the agreement, Paramount and Warner Bros. must release at least 30 theatrical films a year for the first two years and 32 for the following three, maintain minimum numbers of wide and independent releases, and ensure that at least half of the films are produced or jointly produced by the combined company. They must keep 45-day theatrical windows and a 90-day SVOD holdback for qualifying films. A $30 million per film penalty is assessed for missing the annual quota, with divestiture of Paramount’s stake in Miramax in play if the shortfall remains unaddressed.

“Further, the proposed consent decree imposes these requirements on film distribution and basic cable negotiations in the midst of a rapidly-changing marketplace,” Martinez-Olguin wrote. “The Court therefore finds that the proposed consent decree reflects a settlement between the parties that is a fair, reasonable, and good faith approach to address the competitive harms alleged in the Complaint, and does not violate the law or public policy.”