WGA says the Warner Bros. merger would be a ‘disaster’ for writers

The Writers Guild of America on Thursday came out loudly against a merger between Warner Bros. and any other studio, saying such a consolidation would be a “disaster” for writers.

The statement comes two days after Warner Bros. said it is considering “multiple offers.” Paramount, recently acquired by David Ellison’s Skydance, is the most eager suitor. Any deal involving another content producer would shrink the number of buyers in the market.

“Merger after merger in the media industry has harmed workers, reduced competition and freedom of expression, and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars that could be better invested in organic growth,” the WGA East and West said in a statement Thursday. “Combining Warner Bros. with Paramount or another major studio or streamer would be a disaster for writers, for consumers and for the competition. WGAW and WGAE will work with regulators to block the merger.”

The WGA has a long track record of opposing corporate mergers. It opposed the failed 2002 merger between Dish and DirecTV.

In 2011, the union tried to block the merger of Comcast and NBCUniversal, warning that the media landscape was already too consolidated. The union also warned that Comcast could use its control over cable distribution to favor its own content.

The WGA also raised concerns about “net neutrality” in expressing its opposition to the AT&T merger with Time Warner, which was announced in 2016.

“At a time when the country demands and needs the broadest possible range of views, stories and voices, we have handed the keys to the media kingdom to giants whose sole motivation is to maximize their short-term investment returns, not to inform, enlighten or entertain,” the WGA East said when the merger was approved in 2018.

The union also opposed the Disney-Fox merger in 2017 and the Amazon-MGM merger in 2021. It condemned the Warner Bros. merger. and Discovery in 2022, which undid the AT&T merger a few years earlier, calling it a “clear disaster for content creators who have lost their jobs and a potential employer, as well as for consumers facing a poorer, less diverse content landscape.”

The union has done that too called up more robust antitrust enforcement. In 2023, the union warned that Disney, Netflix and Amazon were about to become the industry’s “new gatekeepers.”