The Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block Paramount Skydance\u2019s proposed takeover of Hollywood studio Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing the $110 billion (Kshs. 14.2T) acquisition would violate federal antitrust law and harm writers.<\/p>\n
This latest hurdle comes a day after California and 11 other states launched separate suits to block the merger.<\/p>\n
With Tuesday\u2019s lawsuit, one of Hollywood\u2019s powerful labour unions hopes to undo the US Department of Justice\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n
Many fear the merger will result in massive job cuts in an industry that has been under siege from consolidations and layoffs.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe proposed Paramount-Warner Bros. merger threatens the economic and creative health of the American entertainment industry,\u201d the WGA complaint said, adding the merger \u201cwould eliminate competition for buying film and television writing, resulting in suppressed compensation, worse deal terms, and reduced programming volume and diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n
The owners of Paramount Skydance, the Ellison family, are close to US President Donald Trump, and the deal would give them control of CBS News and CNN, along with film studios Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros., and streaming platforms Paramount+ and HBO Max.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith fewer competitors, the merged Paramount-Warner Bros. entity would have both the incentive and the ability to lower costs by suppressing writers\u2019 wages and reducing output. Writers will be paid less and have fewer employment opportunities,\u201d the Writers Guild said in its complaint.<\/p>\n
Paramount engaged in a bidding war against Netflix to land Warner Bros., and argues the deal will create a strong rival to Netflix, Amazon and Apple.<\/p>\n
To win support, the conglomerate has pledged to release at least 30 films a year that will remain in theatres for a minimum of 45 days.<\/p>\n
The US legal proceedings are being watched in the United Kingdom and the European Union, where regulators have yet to approve the deal.<\/p>\n
The post Hollywood writers union sues to block US Paramount deal<\/a> appeared first on KBC Digital<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Writers Guild of America (WGA) filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block Paramount Skydance\u2019s proposed takeover of Hollywood studio Warner Bros. Discovery, arguing the $110 billion (Kshs. 14.2T) acquisition would violate federal antitrust law and harm writers. This latest hurdle comes a day after California and 11 other states launched separate suits to block the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-146832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}