{"id":790479,"date":"2026-07-29T02:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-29T02:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/790479\/"},"modified":"2026-07-29T02:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-29T02:31:08","slug":"ari-emanuel-supports-paramount-warners-deal-in-new-op-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/790479\/","title":{"rendered":"Ari Emanuel Supports Paramount-Warners Deal in New Op-Ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tHollywood power player Ari Emanuel<\/a> is weighing in on Paramount<\/a>\u2018s $111 billion megadeal for Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a>, giving a full-throated endorsement of David Ellison\u2019s pursuit.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmanuel wrote an op-ed<\/a> Tuesday afternoon in The Wall Street Journal, arguing that the state attorneys general suing to stop the deal on antitrust grounds are misguided at best, and the result of a poisoned political environment at worst.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen government officials manipulate markets to reach political outcomes, antitrust stops protecting competition and starts threatening it,\u201d Emanuel writes. \u201cThe attorneys general should drop this case and get back to enforcing the laws as they are written. Let Hollywood creatives get back to trying to rip each other\u2019s heads off at the box office, in streaming, online and everywhere else we compete. It\u2019s what we\u2019re best at.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEmanuel, of course, oversees WME, one of the biggest talent agencies in Hollywood, with a slew of clients who do business with both Paramount and Warners. He also runs TKO, which owns the UFC, which inked a $7.7 billion deal with Paramount last year.<\/p>\n

\n\tEmanuel sat next to President Donald Trump when the UFC hosted an event at the White House last month (Ellison was seated about 20 feet away from them), and The Hollywood Reporter saw him and UFC CEO Dana White bring guests over<\/a> to the president for hellos throughout the night.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn his op-ed, Emanuel argued that the antitrust suit \u201cdoesn\u2019t remotely reflect reality,\u201d citing the lack of discussion of competitors like Amazon and Netflix in the theatrical market and the sad state of affairs in cable TV.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe attorneys general don\u2019t get to ignore the platforms that compete every day for audiences, talent, capital and content just because it makes their case harder,\u201d he writes. \u201cBelieve me, as somebody who\u2019s in those rooms, every green light, marketing budget and release date is decided against the reality of that broadly competitive environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also makes the case that if the deal gets nixed, Warner Bros. will have a difficult time competing given its vast debt load and declining revenue, while suggesting that Paramount could survive, albeit at a subscale level, thanks to Ellison\u2019s love of the business.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, there is no doubt that the deal is controversial in the industry. In the spring, a slew of bold-faced names (including many WME clients) signed an open letter<\/a> opposing the deal, while the WGA has filed a monopsony-focused antitrust suit of its own. SAG-AFTRA also expressed concern this week<\/a>, unless \u201cenforceable safeguards\u201d are put into place.<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, the deal has other industry supporters, including director James Cameron and AMC CEO Adam Aron, underscoring the complicated nature of the deal and the challenging reality of today\u2019s Hollywood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hollywood power player Ari Emanuel is weighing in on Paramount\u2018s $111 billion megadeal for Warner Bros. Discovery, giving…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":790480,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[74978,88,4208,10343],"class_list":["post-790479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ari-emanuel","tag-entertainment","tag-paramount","tag-warner-bros-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}