Paramount CEO may remove operations from California over stalled merger

Paramount CEO David Ellison may pull his operations out of California if the state does not end its attempt to block the company’s merger with Warner Bros Discovery and agree to settlement talks as soon as October.The rumours were first reported by the publication Variety on Tuesday. They signal Ellison may be willing to leverage economic pressure on California’s ailing film industry in order to push through the merger.Recommended Stories list of 4 itemslist 1 of 4Trump demands compensation from Iran as talks on Strait of Hormuz continuelist 2 of 4Trump’s media company reports $238m losslist 3 of 4What is the US spending all their war money on?list 4 of 4Vietnam’s VinSpace announces deal with SpaceX to launch first satelliteend of listAl Jazeera was not able to independently confirm the validity of the report.In July, California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced that he was leading a coalition of 12 state attorneys general in an antitrust lawsuit to block the consolidation.Should Paramount and Warner Bros Discovery combine, Bonta warned that the resulting company would control 27 percent of theatrically released films in the United States and a third of the country’s basic-cable...