Is David Ellison considering a nuclear option of relocating Paramount’s headquarters from California — and potentially diverting billions of production dollars from the Golden State — if California Attorney General Rob Bonta files an expected challenge to the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal?
That was the suggestion in an anonymously sourced item published by Semafor on Sunday, which said that Ellison’s “friends and advisers” have been “pushing the media executive to consider shifting his business out of the state.” The report cautioned that Paramount has made no decisions on this front and that such talk “may just be a show of brinkmanship.”
Indeed, the Semafor report comes as California’s AG appears to be moving forward with plans to file a lawsuit to block Paramount’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery “as soon as this week,” the New York Times reported Sunday. California would be joined by states including New York, Washington and Connecticut in the legal challenge in arguing the deal would “harm competition in the market” for tentpole films among other claims, per the Times report.
Representatives for Paramount Skydance did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
