How Rob Bonta’s mulishness could blow up Hollywood

Is it hasta la vista, baby, for Paramount Pictures in LA?

Could be, thanks to a reckless anti-merger lawsuit led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta.

The iconic Hollywood studio has vowed to decamp to Tennessee, Texas or Georgia — unless Bonta agrees to negotiate by Oct. 1.

Talk about public officials losing the plot.

Bonta needs to stop stalling, grandstanding and politicizing the proposed Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros. merger. And he needs to do it now.

The federal government in June approved the union.

Bonta, on the other hand, has led a group of 12 blue-state attorneys-general who’ve moved to block the pairing, or delay it long enough to let a future US president intervene. 

While Bonta, et al, insist their stance is legal and not political, why is it then that only Democratic AGs have sued to stop the deal?

Is the problem, for these partisans, really that industry consolidation would hurt consumers? (As if this litigious, tax-dollar-wasting group has a care for the average Joe.)

Or is it that Paramount CEO David Ellison is seen by some as Trump-friendly?

The horror. Here we have a Hollywood executive who doesn’t march in lockstep with Democrats. (Or Republicans, really.)

To keep such an undesirable from gaining more reach, is Bonta willing to blow up Hollywood?

Paramount is one of the last legacy studios that has a physical headquarters in Hollywood proper.

If that studio flees, and its iconic real estate is sold, what happens to Hollywood’s identity? 

To its vitality?

Paramount’s departure would also threaten thousands of LA jobs, billions of dollars in local economic activity, and a web of ancillary businesses such as caterers, prop houses and costume vendors.

So the stakes are not … trivial.

Bonta should know and respect that.

Instead, he’s careening toward a FAFO moment.

Enough, already. 

It’s time to talk, to hash it out, and to rally around Hollywood, for the sake of California.

It’s time to put the public interest over politics.

If Bonta refuses to seek a solution, voters should remember. 

If, one of these days, he runs for higher office, perhaps they’ll say hasta la vista to him.

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