Paramount’s Hollywood Exit Could Trigger an Avalanche in Los Angeles

Bob Hope (pointing to a mountain): Get a load of that bread and butter!
Bing Crosby: Bread and butter? That’s a mountain.

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The peak turns into the Paramount logo (stars, fanfare).

Bob Hope: May be a mountain to you, but it’s bread and butter to me.

— From Road to Utopia (Paramount Pictures, 1946)

Jesus said faith can move a mountain. But so can leftism. And the combination of California-Los Angeles-Hollywood Democratic ineptitude seems about to move the famous Paramount Pictures mountain out of the town and state where it has been for 100 years. Two weeks ago, I wrote an article here on how the imminent Paramount-Warner Bros. company might leave LA after the merger and desolate the entertainment industry (READ MORE: David Ellison Sees the Writing on the Wall for Hollywood). Now it appears Paramount will bolt if the merger is delayed.

Last month, Paramount CEO David Ellison told his senior staff, LA Mayor Bass’s office, and state officials that he will transplant the studio to another (red) state if the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger is not settled by October 1st. California Attorney General Rob Bonta — who has worked to block the merger under liberal pressure — called the threat blackmail. Even though his maneuverings would force Paramount to start paying Warner Bros. $7 million per day beginning October 1st until the merger closes.

A Paramount pullout would start the avalanche that will wipe out the no longer Tinseltown. But its rulers brought the calamity on themselves.

Why the California AG is even involved in trying to block a corporate merger would make a great Hollywood picture — which will never be produced because it makes Hollywood and the Democratic city-state regime look like the leftwing clowns they are. As I wrote in my piece, the opposition to the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger has little to do with the stated objection — economics and jobs. Democratic control of the government and the Industry have resulted in total disaster for both.

White House dreaming Governor Gavin Newsom has run the state since 2019 — into the ground, with the help of big city mayors. They spent $37 billion to reduce housing costs, yet fewer people can afford homes today, 44 percent, than six years ago, 57 percent. Of that sum, $28 billion supposedly went to alleviate homelessness, which increased 20 percent in five years from 151,000 vagrants (2019) to more than 187,000.

I lived in Venice Beach and worked in Hollywood between 1992 and 2004. Neither area was postcard material — though Hollywood once was when reflecting its unique legacy — but kids could walk to school without dodging wretches defecating near them. That’s no longer true.

Like most financiers — and unlike the Democrats in Sacramento, LA, and Tinseltown — movie investor turned studio mogul Ellison values cost effectiveness. He previously countered the bogus fewer jobs-less competition argument by promising to keep Paramount and Warner Bros. as separate legacy entities, and maintain their production slates at 15 films a year. He declared his intention to play the films in theaters well ahead of streaming.

Ellison already put his money where his mouth is by bankrolling mega-hit Top Gun Maverick, which boosted Paramount’s status. And he has no intention of losing $7 million a day due to political interference. So he laid down the recent ultimatum, which had an effect. Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass are now urging Bonta to cease blocking the merger.

This puts Bonta between a rock and a soft place. Because it isolates his masters, the real objectors to the merger, far Left Hollywood elite deathly afraid of traditionalist competition to their woke fare from Trump-ally Ellison. They know their leftwing junk — such as laughable Best Picture Oscar dud One Battle After Another — would crumble against more crowd-pleasing Top Gun Mavericks from two major studios. And they’re melting down at the thought.

Case in point: the ever pathetic beta male Mark Ruffalo threatening Bonta on X last week: “Don’t you dare @AGRobBonta, do not cave. 5,670 film makers put their necks on the line for you to fight this merger. Another 75,000+ and counting have signed to tell you not to concede in just 3 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.”

To quote the brilliant Edward G. Robinson in the wonderful Paramount Picture Double Indemnity, “They’re satisfied. It’s not their dough.” Or their $7 million a day.

A Paramount pullout would start the avalanche that will wipe out the no longer Tinseltown. But its rulers brought the calamity on themselves with two decades of feminist anti-male rot. To the point that a former Industry asset, the Sexy Blonde — from Mae West, who literally saved Paramount from bankruptcy in the Depression (She Done Him Wrong, 1933) to Veronica Lake, who inspired men to keep fighting the Germans and Japanese, to Grace Kelly, who made two Paramount Hitchcock hits (Rear Window, To Catch a Thief) — today traumatizes the supposed entertainers triggered by the Male Gaze.

They can still insult Christians and the memory of C. S. Lewis by giving his faith-based Narnia series to feminist hack Greta Gerwig. Who can further mock us by hiring Meryl Streep to voice the Christ-figure lion, Aslan. Over-the-hill actors Robert DeNiro, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Martin Sheen can protest Trump with a cringeworthy recitation of the Constitution. But they won’t stop the Hollywood avalanche, or the traditionalist reconquest of the arts.

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Book two of my Washington, D.C. political series, The Camelot Trail, will be published in print and e-book on November 17th (just in time for Christmas). Book one, The Washington Trail, was republished last week. You’ll enjoy reading both novels, not just as a welcome break from woke onslaught, but as exiting, sexy, romantic mysteries for real men and normal women. Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, fine bookstores, and my website.