News · Movies
Paramount Owns Warner Bros. Now — And Hulk Angry
By Peter David · October 6, 2026 · Cobra Kai Never Lies
The Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition is officially complete, creating another massive entertainment company and handing Mark Ruffalo a pretty definitive loss in a fight he spent months helping lead.
Well, it’s official. Paramount Skydance completed its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery on October 6, bringing Paramount Pictures, Warner Bros., DC Studios, HBO, CBS, CNN and a ridiculous number of other networks, studios and franchises together under a new company simply called Skydance.
That means Superman and Star Trek now have the same business daddy, Batman and Ethan Hunt are coworkers and Bugs Bunny is technically hanging around with SpongeBob. Corporate mergers usually make my eyes glaze over pretty quickly, but even I have to admit that’s a pretty bizarre collection of characters to have living under one roof.
One guy who probably isn’t celebrating is Mark Ruffalo. The Hulk actor became one of the most recognizable faces fighting the merger earlier this year, joining thousands of filmmakers and other industry professionals who argued that combining Paramount and Warner Bros. would mean fewer jobs, less competition and even more control of Hollywood being concentrated in the hands of a few companies.
Ruffalo took it further than simply putting his name on a letter. In May, he and Matt Stoller wrote an opinion piece arguing that people inside Hollywood were afraid to publicly oppose the deal because they worried about professional retaliation, while Ruffalo continued pushing the campaign as the merger worked its way through regulators.
None of it stopped the deal. Skydance says the combined company will produce at least 30 theatrical movies and more than 180 television shows and series a year, which sounds great on a press release, while the people who fought the merger have spent months arguing that this kind of consolidation ultimately leads to fewer opportunities rather than more.
For DC, this is the beginning of another corporate era just as James Gunn and Peter Safran are trying to build the new DC Universe. For Ruffalo, it has to be a strange day watching the company he very publicly tried to stop become one of the biggest entertainment companies on the planet.
