David Ellison Threatens to Pull Paramount Out of California Starting Oct. 1 if States Refuse to Negotiate Settlement in Antitrust Suit

David Ellison is eager to reach a swift resolution in the antitrust case filed by 12 states seeking to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger. And he’s prepared start moving Paramount out of California as soon as October unless the state’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, agrees to settlement talks, Variety has confirmed.

Ellison told Paramount senior execs last week that he’s prepared to relocate Paramount (and Warner Bros., too, if the merger successfully closes) if Bonta does not agree to negotiate a settlement in the case, sources confirmed to Variety. Ellison said the company will begin the process of exiting California starting Oct. 1 in the event that such talks have not started, and he told his team the Paramount Skydance board has approved the move.

Paramount declined to comment. Ellison’s threat to relocate Paramount — including much of its studio operations, over time — was first reported by industry newsletter Puck.

Bonta has not publicly said what concessions from Paramount-WBD he would consider acceptable enough to take the lawsuit off the table. But the Democratic attorney general has said any remedies would need to be “structural” (i.e., divestments) rather than “behavioral” (e.g., imposing certain production quotas). Variety has reached out to the California AG’s office for comment.

Oct. 1 is when Paramount will begin accruing a “ticking fee” payable to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders of $7 million per day. The trial in the state AGs’ lawsuit is scheduled to start March 2, 2027, roughly five months after that, so Paramount would be on the hook to pay around $1.2 billion to WBD shareholders by the time the trial is scheduled to conclude. (Paramount’s ticking-fee payments to WBD are not due until the deal closes.)

At the Aug. 5 meeting on Paramount’s lot, Ellison told his 12-person senior executive team he expects Paramount to prevail in the antitrust case against the states. Paramount’s headquarters would move first, with tax incentives from competing states helping cover the transition. A five-year plan would then shift most studio jobs out of California.

In a sign of how sudden this decision is, Paramount hasn’t decided yet where its new home might be; the company is considering such destinations as Georgia, Texas and Tennessee. Paramount executives at the Aug. 5 meeting included Paramount’s studio bosses, Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, and CBS and TV media chair George Cheeks, a company insider confirmed.

The notion that Ellison would exit California if the state AGs sued to block the Paramount-WBD merger was floated in an item last month by Semafor. According to that report, Ellison’s “friends and advisers” were “pushing the media executive to consider shifting his business out of the state.”

At the end of 2025, Paramount Skydance had about 17,600 workers worldwide. Warner Bros. Discovery had 35,500. If the merger does cross the finish line, Ellison and his team are expected to slash thousands of jobs at the combined company to achieve cost savings and streamline operations.