Days after settling a lawsuit blocking its acquisition of Warner Bros, Paramount is thinking about bringing in Elon Musk as an investor, a new report suggests.
Having settled a lawsuit that threatened to scupper its deal altogether, Paramount’s $110bn takeover of Warner Bros now looks pretty much a certainty.
The problem, though, is that $110bn is an awful lot of money, even for the unfeasibly rich Ellison family – and so it’s being reported that Paramount executives are looking around for investors willing to shoulder some of the financial burden.
According to Semafor, Paramount boss David Ellison has Elon Musk on his list of potential investors. The outlet’s sources haven’t been able to find out how much Musk might contribute.
The mere mention of Musk’s name brings into focus the inherent problem with America’s media being owned by a handful of billionaires. Once the merger happens, David Ellison will oversee an empire that will include:
Paramount, CBS Studios, Warner Bros Pictures, New Line Cinema, CNN, HBO, TBS, Discovery Channel, to name a few.
It doesn’t end there. David Ellison’s father, Larry, is the owner of tech giant Oracle, and one of America’s richest people. Oracle has a majority stake in TikTok, and sank $40m into the Paramount-Warner deal.
Elon Musk owns X, formerly Twitter, and already has close connections with the Ellisons; Larry has billions invested in Musk’s car/tech company, Tesla.
If Musk becomes an investor in Paramount-Warner, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of sway he might have over the editorial content of news outlets under its control, including CNN and CBS. we’ve already seen how he’s used X to boost right-wing talking points (and that’s putting it politely).
Musk and the Ellisons also have deep connections to the Trump administration. Musk oversaw the disastrous DOGE project. Larry Ellison donated $45m to Trump’s second election campaign.
Trump is constantly ranting and raving about the reporting from CNN and other news outlets. CNN will soon be under the control of a group of people friendly to his political leanings.
In other words: Paramount’s purchase of Warner Bros has implications far beyond the number of movies that get made each year.
We’ll bring you more on all this as we get it.
