The Oscar-nominated actor and activist, who’s currently starring in the box-office smash “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” sounded off on his Instagram Story Friday about Paramount Skydance’s pending $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. The merger, which is currently being challenged by a dozen state attorney generals, including in California, would reportedly cost 4,500 jobs and also see Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison, a Trump enthusiast (and son of Oracle CEO and Trump megadonor Larry Ellison) in charge of not only the biggest studio in Hollywood but also CNN, which has caused alarm given the MAGA makeover he gave to CBS News.
Ruffalo reposted a video to his Instagram Story of Oracle’s executive vice chair Safra Catz boasting about the company’s efforts to help Israel in the wake of the terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, that saw Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups kill 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals with another 251 people being abducted. Catz, who is Israeli, said the following on a panel a few years ago: “There’s a few things that we did that I really can’t talk about to advance the agenda for the Israeli military. But we have some really profoundly scary technology at Oracle and we wanted to make sure that it was available for the effort. Let’s just say that, okay?”
In the next slide of his Instagram Story, Ruffalo, who’s been very vocally against the merger as well as Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza that’s claimed the lives of 73,000 Palestinians, posted a passionate message warning against the merger and Oracle’s complicity in “what we now have come to see as a genocide” against Palestinians while questioning why “Trump pushed this illegal merger through.”
You can read Ruffalo’s entire message here (typos are his):
This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition.
These “really profoundly scary technologies” will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you. 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.
There is an old saying. “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything.”
From one of the biggest tech companies in the world. Powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world. Why has Trump pushed this illegal merger through?
Larry Ellison will own most of “Para Bros”. Larry is a classic Oligarch. They are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance.
We have a chance to stop this. There are 12 state Attorneys General suing to block this merger. It will be catastrophic for our film industry.
There will be a loss of 4500 direct film making jobs and the loss of another 10k ancillary jobs. Merger like this are almost always bad for workers, consumers, and the industry they tend to dominate. It’s a classic antitrust case.
It will hike up the cost of cable and flatten out competition. This means less choice for our audiences. It also concentrates an enormous amount of creative control to companies that say and do things like this strange woman from Oracle.