California’s Lawfare Could Further Empty Out Hollywood

By John Fund

Sunday, August 16, 2026

 

Two heavyweight Hollywood unions — the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, which represent a combined 200,000 film and television workers in the U.S. and Canada — are sounding the alarm about Hollywood’s future. They are urging Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison and California Attorney General Rob Bonta to settle the state’s antitrust lawsuit against the merger of Paramount and Warner Bros.

 

“We cannot overemphasize how damaging the current timeline for the trial . . . is to an already struggling industry,” their letter reads, referring to the March 2027 date set for the antitrust trial. At risk is American film and TV production, especially in California, which is down more than 40 percent from 2022: “We are aware of productions that have been put on hold or canceled altogether, leading to further reductions in available work for our members and other industry workers.” It is worth noting that the Directors Guild is headed by Christopher Nolan, whose new movie The Odyssey is now topping box office charts, making him one of the most powerful voices in Hollywood.

 

Everyone is worried about Hollywood’s future. Paramount’s board has approved a plan to move out of California if the state’s Attorney General Bonta doesn’t agree to settlement talks in his Captain Ahab–like antitrust case by October 1. Ellison is confident that the company can beat the suit opposing Paramount’s $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros., but he is making it clear that the studio’s willing to move to Georgia, Texas, or Tennessee. It already has a presence in these states. Ellison is also well aware that Paramount would save $500 million a year in no-income-tax Texas or Tennessee and almost as much in Georgia, which has a flat 4.99 percent rate.

 

Bonta’s office has denounced Paramount’s announcement, calling it “another attempt to blackmail the state into letting an illegal deal through.” But even Xavier Becerra, the state’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate in this year’s election and Bonta’s predecessor as attorney general, is appalled at Bonta’s intransigence: “You get way more done in the conference room than you do in the courtroom.”

 

Should Bonta not budge, Texas Governor Greg Abbott says he would welcome Paramount. His office noted, “Texas offers the best business climate in America. The state has no corporate income tax and no personal income tax. Paramount already maintains major production facilities in Texas.”

 

There is no disputing that the entertainment industry in California is in dire straits. A Burbank resident who works in film revealed that, because of the slowdown in production, she has worked only twelve days so far this year and is “really close” to giving up. “Hollywood is dead,” proclaims Mark Geragos, the publisher of Los Angeles magazine. High production costs, rapacious unions, and city-led restrictions on location shooting have driven jobs away. The number of on-location shoot days in L.A. has fallen from 37,000 in 2022 to fewer than 20,000 in 2025, a drop of 46 percent. Production has shifted to other states, as well as to the U.K. and Canada, where labor is cheaper, tax credits are plentiful, and union rules are less stringent.

 

Should Paramount decide it has to abandon California, here’s a further suggestion. Ellison should finance a documentary detailing how California is now becoming best known for chasing good-paying jobs out of the state. There is no shortage of well-known actors who are fed up with California and who would be happy to narrate it. One might be Dennis Quaid, the star of Reagan, who is selling his Brentwood home. He told Entertainment Weekly: “I feel like people pay these taxes for no services. . . . People are angry and half-angry, and they’re half kind of feel like giving up, to tell you the truth.”

 

Bonta is clearly an ambitious politician, no doubt someone who thinks the “AG” abbreviation of his title stands for “Aspiring Governor.” Does he really want to run for higher office with the reputation of having diminished California’s signature industry?