Mark Ruffalo Reacts To Paramount-Warner Bros Merger Approval

The actor called the $110 billion merger a bad deal for the country hours after a federal judge cleared the settlement that ends the antitrust fight.

A federal judge signed off on the Paramount-Warner Bros Discovery merger settlement on Wednesday, and Mark Ruffalo wasted no time telling the world exactly what he thought of it.

"This merger will stifle creativity, weaken free speech and cost people their jobs — it is a bad deal for this country and should never have been approved," the actor wrote on X that evening. He called the ruling "an incredibly disappointing outcome for the hundreds of thousands of us who stood up to block it," before adding, "it's also not the end."

Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín's decision clears the last real hurdle standing between Paramount and its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery. California Attorney General Rob Bonta's office and Paramount's legal chief Makan Delrahim both framed the settlement as a win for everyone involved. Ruffalo clearly doesn't see it that way.

"This was never about just one merger," he wrote. "This was about fighting back against corrupt oligarch billionaires trampling the interests of everyday people to line their own pockets. We're still in that fight. Join us."

A Paramount spokesperson gave TheWrap a two-word response when asked about Ruffalo's post: "Didn't read it." A representative for Bonta's office hadn't responded to a request for comment at the time TheWrap published its story.

Months of pressure, one ruling

This isn't a one-off outburst. Ruffalo has spent the better part of this year campaigning against the merger, and he went directly after Bonta earlier in September when reports surfaced that the AG's office was in settlement talks with Paramount.

"Don't you dare @AGRobBonta, do not cave," he wrote then, citing a claim that 5,670 filmmakers had signed on against the deal with another 75,000-plus supporters joining in roughly three weeks. "You work for the people, the very people who will be hurt if you let this lousy deal filled with empty promises go forward."

The fight got uglier last month when Ruffalo tied Larry Ellison's Oracle, which is backing more than $40 billion of the Warner Bros Discovery acquisition, to Israel's military activity in Gaza as part of his case against the merger. Paramount called the remarks antisemitic, and the fallout split the industry into dueling petitions, some backing Ruffalo and some condemning him.

None of that controversy appears to have changed the outcome. The settlement has judicial sign-off now, and the deal that Ruffalo spent months trying to derail is effectively done on the legal front.

What happens to the grassroots campaign he's been fronting is less clear. He says it isn't going anywhere. Whether that translates into anything beyond posts and petitions, with the merger already past its biggest regulatory checkpoint, is the question nobody involved has answered yet.