After the Merger, Will Paramount Leave California?

David Ellison is keeping his nearly approved megacorporation in Hollywood — at least for now. 

Ellison announced back in February that he planned to pursue a merger between Paramount Skydance (already a combined company) with Warner Bros. Discovery ( also a combined company, after their 2022 merger). The dizzying speed of consolidation in the media and entertainment industry set alarm bells ringing for California attorney general Rob Bonta and around a dozen other state AGs, and they sued, arguing that the deal would mean fewer jobs, fewer movies and higher prices. 

That didn’t sit well with Ellison, who, in response, threatened to pull Paramount out of California, fleeing to the income tax-free havens of Texas or Tennessee. And it’s no mystery as to where he got the idea. Ellison is the son of Larry Ellison, co-founder and executive chairman of tech giant Oracle. The elder Ellison moved his company out of California to Austin in 2020 — only to shift gears and announce a subsequent move to Nashville in 2024. 

Reports in the New York Post and Politico, leaked to the publications by anonymous sources, outlined the younger Ellison’s preliminary plans to move to Austin or Nashville with notable details — seemingly daring critics to call his bluff. 

In Austin, reports identified a specific building just down the street from Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios. Driving out to see it last month after these reports broke, I noted how the 415,000-square-foot building sat in a seemingly rural area northeast of Downtown Austin, despite being just a short drive from the heart of the Texas capital. 

And while there’s no leasable building currently fit to house the kind of studio space that Paramount-WB-Discovery would be looking for in Nashville, Ellison would be open to building something that’d work, according to reports. And after all, his dad is nearing the start of construction on Oracle’s 550-acre campus in Music City. 

Fast forward to this week. In a settlement deal that the Paramount CEO struck with Rob Bonta and his coalition of AGs, announced on Monday, the Frankenstein-like company can move forward with its merger as long as it doesn’t sell its massive studio lots on Melrose Avenue or Warner Boulevard. The company also has to invest $1.5 billion into domestic production in the next five years, making at least 30 movies each year, though there’s no requirement that that takes place in California. 

The glaring omission from the Paramount anti-trust settlement, according to many real estate and entertainment industry observers, was in Bonta’s admission during a press conference announcing the deal that while he believed Paramount will stay in California, “it’s not part of the deal.”

After the press conference, Ellison released a statement committing to Tinsel Town. “We aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “Our history is here and this is where our future is being built.”

Still, one must wonder: If that conviction wasn’t strong enough to make its way into the settlement documents, what will it mean in five years? If his father’s example can offer any clues, the elder Ellison’s commitment to Austin lasted just four short years.

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