Mark Ruffalo has hit back after his criticism of the impending Paramount and Warner Bros. merger was called anti-Semitic by Paramount.
The $110billion (£83billion) deal would see Paramount Skydance acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing together major film, TV, news and streaming assets including Warner Bros., HBO and HBO Max, CNN, TNT Sports, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Channel 5, Paramount+, the DC Universe, Harry Potter, Game Of Thrones and The Lord Of The Rings.
Ruffalo is among the strong critics of the merger and has previously accused Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and his father, co-founder and CTO of Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison, of “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world.”
The actor recently shared a clip of a Paramount board member, Safra Catz, to his Instagram story, outlining “really profoundly scary technologies” that Oracle used to help the Israeli military after the October 7 terror attack. Ruffalo likened Larry Ellison to a “classic oligarch” and said that moguls “are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance”.
“This merger has real consequences for real people, and for the entire country,” Ruffalo added. “Scrutinising the Ellisons, including Oracle’s business built on data, surveillance technology and government contracts, and the serious threat to editorial freedom and the loss of a livelihood for thousands of families, is fair and necessary. The $111billion deal would hand one family control over CNN, HBO and Warner Bros., backed in part by foreign money whose influence on editorial decisions has never been fully explained to the public.”
Nobody but the folks who are set to profit heavily off this merger and who have tanked our economy in the past like Jamie Dimon are for this thing. If it wasn’t for the cozy relationship the Ellison’s have with Trump and a partisan and compromised DOJ this would have been stopped… https://t.co/AthrdlDEiv
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 12, 2026
After Ruffalo’s initial post, a spokesperson for Paramount gave a statement to Variety, in which he said that the company is “troubled when anti-Semitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute”.
It continued: “Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”
Ruffalo then took to X to respond, writing: “The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” Ruffalo wrote on X Saturday morning. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.
“This critical and necessary dialogue is then dishonestly framed as being anti-Israel. To be clear, my views come from my own political convictions and should never be interpreted as hostility toward Jewish people, for whom I have deep love and respect. Everything I know about acting, activism, and humanism has been profoundly shaped by the Jewish friends, colleagues, and loved ones who have been integral and family throughout every point of my life.”
The accusation that I am antisemitic is appalling and fundamentally dishonest. Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract, or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people. This critical and necessary dialogue…
— Mark Ruffalo (@MarkRuffalo) August 22, 2026
In June, the US Justice Department gave the green light to the merger, despite a huge industry backlash.
It came after months of negotiations over the future of Warner Bros, with Netflix at one point being perceived as the frontrunner. However, in February, the streaming company backed out of the bidding, leaving the way clear for Paramount Skydance to acquire the major studio.
In April, Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved the $111billion (£82billion) takeover, with Paramount Skydance backed by the tech billionaire Larry Ellison and his son David. The decision had been widely anticipated, with Donald Trump known to be close with the Ellison family, praising Larry in May, calling him a “tremendous man”.
The proposed merger has also been met with criticism from across Hollywood, however, with more than 1,000 industry professionals signing an open letter opposing the deal.
Currently, Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros Discovery have agreed to pause the merger until June 2027 while a judge weighs an ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 attorneys general.
The post Mark Ruffalo hits back after Paramount said his merger criticism was “anti-Semitic”: “Appalling and fundamentally dishonest” appeared first on NME.
