A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance\u2019s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying the blockbuster deal would crush Latino workers and small businesses that support Hollywood.<\/p>\n
In an open letter to California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the League of United Latin American Citizens has urged the state\u2019s top prosecutor to continue his legal fight to block Paramount\u2019s proposed $111-billion takeover<\/a> of the media company that owns HBO, CNN, HGTV and the Warner Bros. film and television studios. <\/p>\n \u201cNo state has more to lose from this disastrous merger … than California,\u201d LULAC National President Roman Palomares and Chief Executive Juan Proa\u00f1o wrote in the six-page letter sent to Bonta late Sunday.<\/p>\n Thousands of jobs would be lost and Latino voices could be squelched should the deal go through as it is currently drawn<\/a>, the LULAC leaders said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe current form of the consolidation would have a devastating and unacceptable impact on Latinos, including those who reside in the Los Angeles community,\u201d they wrote, noting Latinos make up 40% of the state\u2019s population and nearly half of Los Angeles County, where HBO and the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios are based. <\/p>\n At least 4,500 jobs in Southern California would be lost<\/a> if the merger goes through, according to a 106-page report last week from Los Angeles County\u2019s economic office. <\/p>\n Paramount\u2019s proposed merger has carved deep divisions<\/a> and become increasingly contentious. <\/p>\n In recent days, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Xavier Becerra publicly pressured Bonta to settle the lawsuit to avoid drawn-out court fight.<\/p>\n Politicians have been reacting to Paramount\u2019s threat to move its studio, and potentially Warner Bros., from Hollywood to Tennessee<\/a> or Texas unless Bonta backs down.<\/p>\n Theater owners and two major Hollywood unions \u2014 the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees \u2014 have joined the parade pleading for a settlement. But the Writers Guild of America and Teamsters have steadfastly opposed the merger<\/a>, warning about its potential impact on working writers and film crews.<\/p>\n Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison was set Monday to meet Bonta and others representing the 12 states that have sued to block the transaction. <\/p>\n But Bonta abruptly canceled the mediation session<\/a>, accusing Paramount of \u201cplaying games,\u201d leaking details and making misrepresentations about the talks despite agreeing to keep them confidential.<\/p>\n Paramount didn\u2019t immediately comment on the LULAC letter, but previously has touted the merger as a way to build a stronger competitor amid a pullback in local production. The company said it would \u201cinvest $30 billion annually in production and release at least 30 films a year,\u201d a commitment that would lead to \u201cmore jobs over time, and ultimately, a stronger, more durable entertainment industry for generations to come.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTo have it thrown in your face that Paramount will leave Los Angeles<\/a> if they don\u2019t get what they want is really just tantamount to a threat … one that will be devastating to Latinos,\u201d Proa\u00f1o said in an interview with The Times.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a significant number of small businesses \u2014 Latino small businesses \u2014 and Latino residents, employees, and workers that support this industry,\u201d Proa\u00f1o said. \u201cWe\u2019ve been invisible, we\u2019ve been silent \u2014 but we wanted to make sure that LULAC is not silent in this moment.\u201d <\/p>\n In its letter, LULAC pointed to Hollywood\u2019s last mergers, including Discovery\u2019s 2022 acquisition of WarnerMedia from AT&T, saying such tie-ups underscore how media consolidation tramples over Latino voices, particularly when companies resort to job eliminations and other cost-cuts to balance the expense of a corporate takeover. <\/p>\n After Warner Bros. Discovery Chief Executive David Zaslav<\/a> took the helm, his company plodded through a multi-year stretch of turmoil and massive layoffs. The movie \u201cBatgirl,\u201d which was set to feature a young Afro-Latina as lead actor was shelved to gain certain tax benefits. Warner also canceled \u201cGordita Chronicles,\u201d a TV show about an immigrant Dominican family despite solid viewership. <\/p>\n Latino families make up \u201ca significant portion of the film and television industry audience,\u201d the letter said, adding that Motion Picture Assn. data shows Latinos attend more movies per person annually in theaters than any other demographic group.<\/p>\n \u201cHollywood returns almost nothing for that loyalty,\u201d the letter said. \u201cLatino characters filled only 5 percent of speaking roles across 1,300 top-grossing films.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThese and other harms are not collateral to the antitrust case,\u201d LULAC\u2019s letter said. \u201cThey are consequences of the diminished competition that will result. Every studio absorbed by a rival is one fewer buyer for a script, one fewer employer for a crew and one fewer distributor willing to bet on a story its franchise slate<\/a> does not need.\u201d<\/p>\n Warner Bros. Discovery nearly drowned in debt that it took on to finance its $43-billion buyout from AT&T in 2022. Ellison\u2019s proposed Warner Bros. takeover also will be heavily leveraged<\/a> with nearly twice the debt that resulted from Zaslav\u2019s previous deal. <\/p>\n David Ellison has lined up<\/a> nearly $80 billion in debt financing to buy out Warner investors. The tech scion is relying on a guarantee from his billionaire father<\/a>, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, and $24 billion in equity financing from three Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds, representing the royal families of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Abu Dhabi. <\/p>\n The deal comes one year after the Ellison family bought Paramount, which had been on the ropes due to significant under-investment over the years.<\/p>\n \u201cParamount followed the same script: within months of closing its Skydance merger in August 2025, it laid off roughly 2,000 employees, about ten percent of its workforce, just after dismantling its diversity programs earlier that year,\u201d the LULAC letter reads. <\/p>\n \u201cThis time, Zaslav\u2019s going to walk away with a billion-dollar parachute and Paramount may end up with these crown jewels assets when it comes to movie-making and television programming,\u201d Proa\u00f1o said. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A prominent Latino group is raising fresh concerns about Paramount Skydance\u2019s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, saying…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":223023,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[37717,1582,276,408860,1020,14107,8042,2961,27382,224,2444,5337,408861,408859,388433,77684,9207,290,27281,1628],"class_list":["post-1021759","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-bonta","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-disastrous-merger","tag-film","tag-hollywood","tag-job","tag-la","tag-latinos","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-losangeles","tag-lulac-leader","tag-lulac-letter","tag-medium-company","tag-paramount-skydance","tag-small-business","tag-state","tag-warner-bros-discovery","tag-year"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117152565641073008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021759","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1021759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1021759\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223023"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1021759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1021759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1021759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}