Hollywood Week: Ellison, Paramount and The Antitrust Fight, Bezos/DiCaprio, Vincent Pastore
- Details
- Category: Haute This Issue
- Published on Saturday, 08 August 2026 11:13
- Written by Janet Walker
A California district judge issued a blow to David Ellison's effort to quickly advance his takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, this week, ordering the court date for the antitrust lawsuit to begin March 2, 2027.
Paramount Anti-Trust Lawsuit
California District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín issued a ruling this week that pauses the Paramount/Skydance Warner Bros. Discovery mega-merger that has been the subject of concern, protests, and media coverage, until March 2, 2026. In presenting her decision, her instructions included the trial will last 12 court days.
"The timeline set by the court means the merger will remain in limbo for at least seven more months, putting further strain on the companies and financiers involved. The delay will prove costly for Paramount. Under the merger agreement, the company must pay WBD shareholders roughly $7 million for every day after September 30 that the deal has not closed," CNN.com reported.
The 12 state attorney generals collation filed the antitrust lawsuit to block the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, alleging the merger violates Section 7 of the Clayton Act. Section 7 of The Clayton Act essentially bans mergers that will create monopolies. The litigation rests on four major arguments including Market Concentration, Reduced Output and Choice, Consumer Harm, and Labor Impact.
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What It Really Means
For the citizen, "antitrust" simply means that one company cannot hold all the cards, as this will allow the company to bully consumers, forcing them to endure any number of attempts at price gouging, squeeze the market which means strangle the competition, and compel vendors to agree to less than favorable or equitable terms and conditions.
Applying this to the Paramount/Skydance merger of WBD, many believe this will place the Ellison Family, as David Ellison is the son of Oracle founder, Larry Ellison, 81, and one of the wealthiest men in the world due to his technology company, in a position to leverage his empire to control all aspects of the necessary elements associated with creating content across multiple verticals.
There are those who believe this effort will create less opportunities for talent, (actors, actresses), for writers, and for those who are employed in all aspects of film and television production, including wardrobe and stylists professionals, as well as those who provide foundational support including catering, publicity, marketing professionals, and thousands of others who are employed in some form through the production of film and television.
The vertical system, which is at the core of the antitrust litigation, is essentially defined as one entity having controlling of production, distribution, and exhibition of the entertainment property. Placing this transparency over the merger, and it appears that what would be created with the $110 billion acquisition would be a conglomerate that has the reach to control the three verticals within the vertical system.
Some aspects of the merger are of course streaming. To date, rival WBD buyer, Netflix maintains the title of streaming King, and as they were ahead of the curve, and vaulted to dominance through the pandemic, their global numbers are somewhere near 400 million worldwide subscribers, with a combined streaming hours as of June 2026 of 97 billion hours.
In defense of the merger, David Ellison wrote an opinion piece this week, in The New York Times, outlining his views. As this merger looms, larger than life, much like a mesmerizing sunset, in the face of the industry, other aspects of the entertainment seem to fade out of view.
"A combined Paramount-Warner would account for less than 20 percent of all watch time — competing every day against Netflix, Amazon, Apple, which are all companies whose resources dwarf ours. Include YouTube's user-generated content in that math, and our share would drop to around 13 percent. A combined company would account for just 18 percent of the domestic box office over the past 12 months and only 22 percent, on average, over the past two years. Those are not the numbers of a company that can dictate what audiences watch or what writers get paid," Ellison wrote in The New York Times.
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Is It The News
Moreover, since streaming, which is only one aspect, many believe the media companies within the merger, the broadcast news stations, including CBS and CNN, as well as the CBS television network, 60 Minutes, CBS News 24/7, all local CBS owned-and-operated station newscasts, CBS MoneyWatch and CNN and all CNN subsidiaries and assets, such as CNN International and all digital products associated with both, are actually at the core of the litigation.
The Ellison's are known associates of President Donald Trump and are frequent invited guests to the White House and other Trump properties, including Mar-A-Lago, Trump's Palm Beach residence. This close association has left many believing the news stations will be used to create a type of state sponsored media, a far right MAGA mouthpiece to spew a hate diatribe to his base in order to help the next republican win the White House.
Whether this is true, a right wing footprint has clearly been established at CBS, with the installation of Bari Weiss, as the News Director, and the firing of many lauded, established, and known journalists. Revamping the storied "60 Minutes" news program, creating a more documentary style format, is an effort to appeal to the conservative base that is aging into the political decision making within the nation.
"Many young voters transcend traditional partisan boxes. With 40% of Gen Z identifying as 'politically homeless,' a third-party candidate may be welcome. Among the other 60% of Gen Z, 25% identify with the Republican Party and 40% the Democratic Party," Overton Insights reported.
Fight to the Finish
The Ellison's, even as David Ellison, admitted to voting for candidates of both parties, the money backing the mega-merger includes monies from his father, Larry Ellison, who has benefited greatly from Trump's position on AI, and other technology legislations that were initiated on Day 1, of Trump's second presidency.
Quid pro quo, you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours, whatever phrase is used, the idea is the same, if GOP legislation helps the technology sector, it helps the Ellison's, and as long as a republican is leading the nation, the technology sector will have added buoyance, with limited restraint.
So, the fight for the Paramount/Skydance WBD mega-merger may be more about the future of the nation, as well as the future of the entertainment industry.
Courts recently found search giant Google guilty of an illegal monopoly in online search and digital advertising. Google, however, got off easy, and was not ordered to sell Chrome or other parts of its mega-search platform, word processing tools, or its digital products, to divide the company into two parts.
David Ellison has also said he is open to a settlement, for the coalition of AG's is the future of the political process and controlling the hate rhetoric often used by the right wing republicans enough of a concession?
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Bezos/DiCaprio, In Defense of the Environment
Billionaire Jeff Bezos, his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos, and Academy Award winning Actor Leonardo DiCaprio announced they were partnering on The Phoenix Species Project, which will direct more than $200 million to repopulate near extinct plants and animals.
"The initial $200 million commitment makes it the largest single philanthropic initiative dedicated to recovering critically endangered species. The Bezos Earth Fund, recruited by DiCaprio thanks to his friendship with the couple, will commit $100 million. Re:wild will match this with support from DiCaprio, Age of Union and the Todd Graves Family Foundation," Variety.com reported.
Despite the Oscar winner facing some blowback for his partnership with the Bezos', in defense of the environment the dream of repopulations and recovery of species is honorable, however, unless the funding is available, the dream will die just as the plants and animals facing extinction will.
So, with the commitments from both the Bezos' and Leonardo DiCaprio the possibility that the plants and animals on the critical list will be spared extinction, and their contribution to their ecosystem, whatever it is, will survive.
Perhaps stopping the deforestation of the Amazon Rainforest will be next.
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Vincent Pastore, Sopranos Star, Dies
Vincent Pastore, known for his roles as an Italian-American tough guy and most memorable as Salvatore "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on the HBO mob drama, "The Sopranos," died this week. He was 80.
"The veteran actor was found dead in his Bronx residence by a neighbor on August 1. Pastore's manager had not heard from him for three days, but according to a close friend, the actor's driver had spoken to him on the phone Friday night. The death is believed to be from natural causes and is not being investigated by the medical examiner. It has been confirmed that he passed away on August 1," Deadline reported.
Before acting, Pastore served his nation in the Vietnam War, returned to Long Island, and began working as a bouncer, chauffeur, and finally owned a nightclub. He was noticed by actor Matt Dillion and encouraged to take acting classes. The rest, one could say, is cinematic history.
Pastore is survived by his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter.
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Janet Walker is the publisher, founder, and sole owner of Haute-Lifestyle.com. A graduate of New York University, she has been covering international news through the Beltway Insider, a weekly review of the nation's top stories, for more than a decade. A general beat writer/reporter and entertainment/film critic, she is also an accomplished news/investigative news/crime reporter and submitted for Pulitzer Prize consideration "Cops Conspire to Deep Six Sex Assaults" in the Breaking News Category and was persuaded to withdraw the submission. Ms. Walker has completed five award-winning screenplays "The Six Sides of Truth," "The Assassins of Fifth Avenue," "The Wednesday Killer," "The Manhattan Project," and the sci-fi thriller "Project 13: The Last Day." She has also published "Unholy Alliances: A True Crime Story," a non-fiction narrative, "Days, Times, Seasons, and Events: A Collection of Poetry & Prose," and "Songs of Freedom: A Collection of Biblical Teachings," which can be purchased here. She is a member of the Authors Guild, the Los Angeles Press Club, the National Writers Union, and a member of the International Federation of Journalists.
