At first it just seemed like a happy coincidence — a Hollywood agency mogul supporting a Hollywood corporate merger. Ari Emanuel published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal last Tuesday saying David Ellison buying Warner Bros. was a good idea and that those 12 Democratic AG’s who have sued to stop the deal were on the wrong warpath.
“The attorneys general should drop this case and get back to enforcing the laws as they are written,” the WME chief wrote, as he extolled a Paramount-WB tie-up and said it would be good for the business.
Sure, Ellison had committed last year to pay Emanuel’s TKO $7.7 billion to broadcast UFC fights, a fact he conveniently neglected to mention. And the timing certainly benefited Ellison — earnings were coming, a time when Wall Street would be paying close attention and could express its worry financially about a deal falling through. But still, just a nice little stocking-stuffer under the mogul’s tree.
Over the past week, however, the support has started to look a lot less like passive presents and a lot more like an active strategy. That strategy? Make it seem like a lot of Democrat-approved personalities have no problem with the merger, isolating Rob Bonta, Tish James and the rest of the dozen AGs suing to block the deal as a bunch of regulatory crazies. Never mind that these are some of the country’s most decorated legal enforcers, with many decades of experience, from places as different as Arizona and Massachusetts.
