Paramount condemns Ruffalo’s merger criticism

Paramount has come out swinging against a Friday screed from Mark Ruffalo, in which the award-winning actor accused moguls David and Larry Ellison of “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world.”

A spokesperson for the David Ellison-run enterprise said the company is “troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. 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 took to Instagram with a years-old clip of Paramount board member Safra Catz discussing “really profoundly scary technologies” that Oracle used to assist the Israeli military following the Oct. 7 terror attacks. That 2023 event saw Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups kill 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals and abduct 251 people. Ruffalo referred to Larry Ellison as a “classic Oligarch,” and warned of the danger of his son’s bid to combine Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery. Referencing the Catz clip, Ruffalo encouraged his followers to “look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.”

Ruffalo was one of the earliest Hollywood figures to decry the proposed Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount merger. Numerous industry sources have expressed concern over Ruffalo’s conflating the merger with anti-Israel sentiments.

Paramount said Ruffalo’s post “brings us to a moment to lower the temperature, not raise it. We’d rather build than further engage in such rhetoric. This simply exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction. On the other hand, our commitment to great content is matched by our commitment to acceptance – to every story, every storyteller, and no blacklists, no exceptions, for anyone.”

-Variety