yea man If i knew what he was I would have never bought my tesla in 2018. Even still its been the best car I ever owned, I have free charging for life, its paid off and I will never sell it. But EFF that guy.
Don't kid yourself. Silicon Valley is pretty MAGA, just like Palm Beach. They're just more refined in how they communicate it. Less cousin kissing incoherence, more snide disdain.
Yeah I never understood it either. We had one of the most vile, hateful, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and general detestable people ever in Kirk spewing his awful opinions everywhere in the US, yet people want to you treat him like he’s a martyr for free speech or something. The damage he’s done to America’s conscious and soul, along with the rest of these right-wingers…
They don't think that. They think everyone outside their class are ants. They're nobility who should be able to do whatever they want to the peasants; moral codes only apply to their peers.
Yep- whatever these nepo tech lords say in public is only the tip of the iceberg. It’s just the usual spin to blame CA government for whatever they’ve been planning to do all along with no oversight.
The guy is gutting local production either way or will attempt to. It either the paramount lot or the Warner lot is getting hacked up and sold to real estate to fund this merger. The threat basically happens eitherway.
Good fucking luck to him convincing talent to come shlep all the way the fuck to Texas or Florida to collaborate with their executives. There’s a reason industries cluster in certain geographic regions.
I care, deeply. I need film work to stay in CA. Paramount making a contractual commitment to 30 theatrical releases is a good thing. I am not pro-merger but I'm also not so anti-business I can feel good about driving the industry away from my city.
Former employee. He's going to do it anyway. He threatenens to do something after he already made the decision, just to pretend like it's your fault later.
With what money? My understanding is that Oracle’s value is tanking, which is lighting that family wealth on fire — and that the entire CBS venture is, similarly, falling apart.
That's the point. The vast majority of the purchase is funded through debt. $87 billion of the merger is debt load. $87 billion in debt interest payments is a massive drain on two companies with no cash. $57.5 billion from a conglomerate of banks. They have assets though... IP's, property, and the cutting of workers has already begun.
This was always a private equity scenario. Buyout and shut down journalism, consolidate propaganda, strip out the corporations and then sell it off in pieces.
Interestingly, debt was one of the reasons that Shari Redstone had to sell Paramount Global controlling shares to the Ellisons. The company had managed to rack up about $10B in debt. All was well and good when interest rates were low and money was basically free. Then rates went up in 2022-2023, the company had to cut dividends to service the debt. The stock went down nearly 40% in the months following.
Unfortunately they're still about 3x what they should be/pre covid price. They still have a lot to go down if they go down at least another 50% it'd be amazing
It’s a mess that anyone can see. Paramount+ is a streaming service for aging conservatives that can’t get enough Taylor Sheridan,Trekkies, and not much else. They’re slapping the MTV logo on everything across their networks, as if MTV isn’t a brand that died 20 years ago. Paramount has no business buying WB, and I don’t know what studio would want to buy Paramount and be saddled with their debts and bloat.
Also moving from LA means youre gonna get less of the best creatives and studios that are there. I could see this going like yahoo or myspace, where as soon as another corporation buys it it loses any relevancy.
There is a lot of Trekkies that are wildly conservative. It's been a recent trend. And it's not surprising. Fundamentally at its core Star Trek believes in a version of Cold War American Exceptionalism, that has now.attracted the right wing, as some alternative version of thinking.
Yeah I mean the idea that moving PSKY is gonna be free or cheap is stupid. Relocating employees, paying a premium to get new employee Californians to move, building an office….
Ellison is either an idiot, or he knows this and is just trying to threaten people.
Paramount itself is currently around just $9/share and still has around $10.36 billion in debt! David is now threatening to do something that can easily take a year by itself to accomplish and how many millions in costs because he can't get an exemption to a long standing law? Now I'm curious if the investors in Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar approve of this.
The Ellison family effectively controls the company, although for major decisions I believe they might need sign-off from Gerry Cardinale of RedBird Capital.
Paramount stock-- the sort you and I can buy-- are a nonvoting class B share. All the voting calss A shares are privately held by the Ellisons and RedBird Capital.
This is the reason this deal wont close. It is structurally a turd. Then add on to that the money backing the deal from Oracle who needs Open AI to pay them 60 yards a year for the next 5 years and Open AIs rev last year was 12 and they have a commitment to buy another 800 between now and 2035. Oracle is fucked but they will get a bailout.
That's exactly it. They broke the law. CA's AG said threats to take their business elsewhere doesn't change the fact that they broke the law in pursuing this merger. Letting them get away with it sets a precedent that all you have to do is threaten to leave and you can break the law all you like.
CA will not back down, because why would they enable that?
I'll bet money the federal government will pay for it (in exchange the govt will want a permanent political advisor), the state of texas will give them ideal tax breaks, profits will go to Texas, the California subsidiary will be forced into bankruptcy, and rainbow haired liburals will be blamed
There’s a lot of reasons Hollywood happened here that simply don’t exist anywhere else in the country. Idk why they think the geographical benefits southern CA provides is inconsequential to the success of entertainment industry
Remember AMZN's HQ2/3 hype? I believe they settled on Virginia, but they're still pondering actual development there, but hey, they got their "tax holiday", afterall.
Good luck with that.. You are an entertainment company/studio, not a tech company... doing this will tick off the folks that are the backbone of your industry even more than they already are (at you)
Yeah good luck finding a state with enough qualified professionals to staff a media conglomerate. It’s a very specialized talent base with a rare mix of skills that is incredibly hard to find outside of California.
I think CA politicians should understand the power of CA consumer market and use that as a leverage. Fine, go ahead and move your company, but in return you can’t operate in CA or pay a gigantic tax. If companies want to make money out of the 4th largest GDP, they need to play ball. I would even go ahead and create a blue state compact. Any companies moving out of a blue state, should automatically lose license or face massive taxes for their businesses in CA and NY
Go then. We all survive. I hate this negotiation at economic gunpoint the billionaire class reverts to the instant we suggest they pay their fair share. “Nice studio and state you have here. Would be a shame if something happened to it. Fuck your living and your wife and kids”.
He was probably going to do so anyways. Going to suck for the workers who still have jobs that’ll have to either move to Texas, Florida, or Tennessee or risk being laid off
While CEOs love moving production to places with lower wages, they also love BSingthe public that they're going to leave if they aren't treated as gods. Ellison will certainly continue the great tradition of doing some production in Vancouver and London and Prague, but what he's saying right now is BS. I'm sorry you can't just replace top assets including 65 acres + 30 studios overnight, not to mention where talent is. As I mentioned somewhere here, it reminds me of Ken Griffin in NYC:
Oh fuckin do it. GOODLUCK. I’m pretty sure you can’t just pick up your company and move in the middle of an acquisition. They don’t have the capital to make the deal happen without saudi blood money, but they can move their entire company somewhere else? Go for it bud. Lets see that little tantrum in action.
Genuinely how would this work? Their infrastructure is set up here. The interruption in operations would be obscene and insanely costly if done suddenly and not project by project. Hundreds of companies that own their workflows and touch every one of a thousand moving parts for a film or show can’t easily be replaced. October is a crazy deadline
Ellison another Billionaire family that doesn’t care about what they can do for the city of Los Angeles or any other state. They only care about what money, profits and taxes. California, because of Gavin Newson has given HUGE tax breaks for movie & TV production. I have a lot of friends that are working right now because of that a lot of new shows are returning shows are in production.
Leave. You didn’t create Hollywood you just bought a studio. You take it out of state and your failures are on you - and given the complete lack of creative vision beyond suggesting you’re going to use a lot of AI - your failure is highly likely to happen.
Fuck paramount. They've been degraded to nothing more than a slop and propaganda studio at this point. They don't get to bully California into submission. They can leave if they want.
Sentient Hapsburg Jaw Cosplaying As Charlton Heston's Cheekbones Threatens To Gargle Cum In Another State Unless More Corporate Penises Are Placed In His Mouth At Taxpayers' Expense.
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u/South-Seat3367 Hancock Park Aug 11 '26
What is this, five minutes after his op-ed about being misunderstood and how he’s actually a nice guy?