Just over a month has gone by since Paramount Global officially merged with David Ellison’s Skydance Media, and there are already talks about an even larger merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery. This merger, if it happens, would be one of the biggest in the entertainment industry, drastically altering Hollywood—and likely not in a positive way.

Looking at previous large corporate mergers, even the best possible outcome for a Warner Bros.-Paramount merger could cause significant negative impacts. At worst, it could permanently damage the mainstream movie and TV industries. Considering Ellison’s stated business goals and Paramount’s controversial actions to approve its last merger, there is concern that this could lean closer to the worst-case scenario. This article will explore five reasons for hoping Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav turns down Ellison’s proposal—and that regulators step in if he accepts.

Before merging with Disney in 2019, 20th Century Fox released between 11 and 25 wide-release films each year this century. Post-merger, 20th Century Studios now releases only about three to five movies each year, six in 2025 with “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” included. The animation studio Blue Sky was shut down, and the arthouse segment, Searchlight, has seen similar reductions with only three theatrical releases in 2025. Some movies may go directly to streaming, but the reality is when two studios merge, together they produce fewer films than before.

It was challenging enough for theaters when the number of major Hollywood studios dropped from six to five. Reducing to four could be catastrophic. Warner Bros. has enjoyed a series of theatrical hits recently after struggles following its Discovery merger, releasing films well-received by critics (“One Battle After Another”), general audiences (“Minecraft”), and both (“Sinners”). While Paramount hasn’t seen the same level of recent success, it still contributes significantly with comedies like “The Naked Gun” and crowd favorites like “Roofman.” A merged entity that’s less inclined to take risks may result in many great WB and Paramount films never being made.

The outlook for linear TV isn’t very bright either. If the Paramount transaction doesn’t happen, Warner Bros. plans to separate its cable TV networks (excluding HBO and Turner Classic Movies) into a new company loaded with debt. However, the Paramount merger could stop this division—and the fate of WB and Paramount networks under such a merger remains uncertain.

When Disney merged with 20th Century, their TV networks survived because they didn’t compete directly; Disney lacked a prestige channel like FX, and Fox didn’t have a kids’ network like Disney Channel. The deal didn’t include FOX’s main broadcast network, FOX News, or FOX Sports, which remain competitors to Disney’s ABC and ESPN. However, WB and Paramount have a lot more overlap and direct competition among their networks, making a merger significantly more complicated.

Would Showtime still exist if its parent company already has HBO in the premium cable space? Do Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network merge into a black-white-and-orange blob? While reduced competition might sound appealing to streaming customers wishing to subscribe to fewer separate services, it’s sure to be bad for the variety of television programming out there.

This is perhaps the most urgent reason this merger shouldn’t happen, because it’s the one where we already have the most evidence of disaster. While in the process of Paramount’s merger with Skydance, CBS News settled with the Trump administration for $16 million over allegedly unfavorable editing of a “60 Minutes” interview — a lawsuit experts say CBS easily could have won. Shortly after Stephen Colbert criticized this settlement, it was announced “The Late Show” wouldn’t be renewed with any host. The “South Park” guys are lucky they got a $1.5 billion deal just before their new season started, allowing them (for now) to mock their corporate overlords’ bad decisions, hopefully without negative consequence.

Paramount is now looking at buying right-wing outlet The Free Press and putting owner Bari Weiss in charge of CBS News. If that’s the current state of journalism and political commentary at Paramount-owned outlets, the idea that Paramount could soon also own CNN should be a huge red flag for anyone who cares about an actually free press that won’t just kowtow to a lawsuit-happy President.

Six days before David Ellison announced his intentions to buy the studio, Warner Bros. became the third movie studio, after Universal and Disney, to sue the AI company Midjourney for copyright infringement. Maybe the timing here is purely coincidental. But consider that David’s father Larry is one of the single biggest investors in the AI boom via his tech company Oracle, and that David’s vision for Paramount involves using AI. An Ellison-owned WB would almost certainly lean more heavily towards a pro-AI stance — something many in Hollywood would consider an anti-worker stance.

But even aside from the heightened threat of AI taking away jobs, a WB-Paramount merger would result in tremendous job losses because that’s what corporate mergers do. Thousands of Fox employees lost their jobs during the Disney merger, and the same is unavoidable a WB-Paramount merger. Given film and TV workers have been facing increasing work shortages since the streaming boom began to burst, now might be the absolute worst time for yet more merger-driven layoffs.

Let’s be unrealistically optimistic for a second and imagine the best possible scenario for a WB-Paramount merger. Hypothetically, let’s say it’s a well-run business that still produces just as much film and TV as the separate companies did individually, drops Paramount’s current censorship-happy attitude, and takes a strictly ethical and human-centered approach to AI with few if any layoffs.

Even in that unlikely scenario, the merger would still be a bad idea, on the simple grounds that corporate consolidation and monopolistic practices are bad for the culture. No one individual or family should have that much power over all mainstream media (and we haven’t even touched upon how much power the Ellison family will have if Oracle also acquires TikTok). The functionality of a capitalist system depends on regulation and competition, and the idea the system could be so unregulated as to allow a single mega-corporation to crush all competition should worry all of us.