Mark Ruffalo to California's Attorney General: Don't Settle the Paramount Suit

Mark Ruffalo is pressing California attorney general Rob Bonta and a coalition of eleven other state attorneys general not to settle their antitrust lawsuit against Paramount Skydance — the case Ruffalo links to keeping David Ellison from acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. In a post on X, he wrote, “Don’t you dare, [Rob Bonta], do not cave,” and cited 5,670 filmmakers who, in his words, put their necks on the line behind the effort. (The excerpt of his post is cut off mid-sentence, so the full appeal isn't visible here.) Ruffalo is not a party to the litigation; he is lending a famous face to a legal fight that would otherwise be conducted in filings. The argument he is making is narrower than a general objection to consolidation: it treats a settlement as the thing that clears the path for a specific acquisition, which turns Bonta's decision into one about whether to keep litigating rather than about what remedy to accept.