{"id":417218,"date":"2026-05-08T01:59:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417218\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T01:59:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T01:59:10","slug":"mark-ruffalo-says-many-were-afraid-to-sign-letter-against-wb-merger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/417218\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Ruffalo Says Many “Were Afraid” To Sign Letter Against WB Merger"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDespite uniting nearly 5,000 signatories against the Paramount<\/a>\u2013Warner Bros<\/a>. merger, Mark Ruffalo<\/a> is fighting just as hard for those in Hollywood who wouldn\u2019t sign the recent open letter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe 4x Oscar nominee recently noted that there is \u201ca deep, ugly and pervasive fear of speaking out\u201d in the entertainment industry right now, as many \u201cwere afraid\u201d to sign his letter<\/a> urging state officials to block the hostile takeover.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis plan is already in motion,\u201d he and American Economic Liberties Project director Matt Stoller wrote in a New York Times<\/a> op-ed. \u201cWithin weeks of Paramount winning the bidding war for Warner Bros., we helped bring together a loose coalition of civil society groups, unions and actors, and this coalition enlisted over 1,000 artists to sign an open letter indicating our support of state attorneys general efforts to block the takeover. Many more subsequently added their voices, and the letter now has nearly 5,000 signatories.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey continued, \u201cBut the most revealing thing about that letter wasn\u2019t the people who signed. It was the people who didn\u2019t. Not because they disagreed \u2014 because they were afraid. There are many reasons to block this deal, but we now believe the most fundamental one is what we encountered when asking artists to use their voices: fear. A deep, ugly and pervasive fear of speaking out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe heard time and time again from artists, when asked to sign this letter, that they supported it but were afraid of retribution. Their fear is not unjustified,\u201d the pair added, noting several examples of alleged retaliation, including WB\u2019s CNN pulling a segment discussing the merger, on which Ruffalo was supposed to appear.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis merger will cause many harms in Hollywood,\u201d they wrote. \u201cBut one is already in effect: People are afraid to say what they think about their own industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn February, Netflix threw in the towel on the Warner Bros. deal, refusing to raise its bid against Paramount Skydance\u2019s \u201csuperior\u201d $31-per-share offer<\/a>, following the $82.7 billion deal<\/a> Netflix signed with WBD in December before the Ellison-owned company launched its hostile takeover<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, Ruffalo and Stoller were among more than 1,000 signatories<\/a> on the letter claiming the merger will \u201cthreaten the sustainability of the entire creative community.\u201d The letter, which has since grown to nearly 5,000 signatures, was organized by the Committee for the First Amendment, the Future Film Coalition, the Writers Guild of America and the Democracy Defenders Fund.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite uniting nearly 5,000 signatories against the Paramount\u2013Warner Bros. merger, Mark Ruffalo is fighting just as hard for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[430,156,5691,111,139,69,214425,421,214426,5942],"class_list":["post-417218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-mark-ruffalo","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-open-letter","tag-paramount","tag-paramount-warner-bros-takeover","tag-warner-bros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}