In a year of grueling press tours, make no mistake: the most chilling villain of the current awards season is Mark Ruffalo.
The actor recently took to X—the digital town square where so much vital tracking data is harvested—to publicly harass California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Ruffalo’s demand? That Bonta “not cave” on the antitrust lawsuit currently preventing David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance from acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. Ruffalo claims that 5,670 filmmakers have “put their necks on the line” to stop this merger, framing a routine corporate consolidation as some sort of existential threat to the medium of film.
To which I must gently ask: whose necks? I certainly haven’t seen them at the Polo Lounge.
I have covered this industry for two decades, and if there is one thing I have learned, it is that the real artists in Hollywood are not the people standing behind the camera. The real artists are the visionaries brave enough to leverage a mountain of private equity debt to buy a legacy studio, fire its mid-level accounting staff, and vault its completed films for a tax write-off. David Ellison is trying to paint a masterpiece of vertical integration, and Mark Ruffalo is standing in the gallery screaming about labor rights.
I sat down for chopped salads last week at San Vicente Bungalows with a source close to the production of this merger, and the human toll of Ruffalo's crusade is absolutely devastating. The reps are exhausted. The publicists are working overtime just to remind the trades that monopolies are actually very chic right now.
What Mark doesn't get is that cinema is about family, and right now, the government is actively preventing our corporate parent from adopting a distressed asset and harvesting its organs to boost our Q3 share price.
Ruffalo and his army of indie malcontents simply don't understand the discourse. A green light doesn't just happen because a writer has a “story” or a “unique perspective on the human condition.” A green light happens because a multinational conglomerate has finally eliminated all other options for consumers, forcing them to subscribe to a single streaming platform that costs $42 a month and only plays legally distinct Batman spin-offs.
We are drowning in content. The absolute bravest thing a studio can do right now is buy a rival and immediately burn its film negatives for the insurance money. That is curation. By trying to keep Warner Bros. Discovery independent, Ruffalo is threatening the delicate ecosystem that allows a CEO to earn a $140 million performance bonus for successfully canceling a beloved television show.
Rob Bonta is a politician, which means he is sadly beholden to “voters” and “the rule of law,” rather than the people who actually keep this state running: CAA packaging agents. The California Attorney General's office seems to believe that allowing one company to control 60 percent of theatrical distribution might stifle competition.
If filmmakers have more than one studio to pitch to, they get confused and start asking for things like backend points. We are simply trying to simplify their workflow by ensuring we are the only door they can knock on before they starve.
I was on the red carpet for the premiere of *Top Gun: Maverick*. I felt the electricity in the air. I saw firsthand what happens when a massive intellectual property dominates the cultural landscape until independent thought is temporarily eradicated. It was beautiful. Mark Ruffalo played the Hulk for a decade; he should understand the majesty of a cinematic universe where every single creative decision is funneled through the exact same risk-averse marketing algorithm.
If we do not let David Ellison buy Warner Bros. Discovery, what happens next? He might have to settle for just owning half of Hollywood. He might have to endure the indignity of competing against another studio for a script. Frankly, I don't want to live in a world with that kind of creative restriction.
So I ask Rob Bonta directly: do not listen to the actors. Do not listen to the 5,670 filmmakers whose names I refuse to learn. Think of the box office. Think of the synergy. Let David Ellison fulfill his God-given destiny to own every movie ever made, so that we may finally be free of the burden of choice.