Paramount Slams Mark Ruffalo Merger Attack as ‘Antisemitic,’ Says Company Does Not ‘Tolerate Prejudice of Any Kind’

Paramount has come out swinging against a Friday screed from Mark Ruffalo, in which the award-winning actor accused moguls David and Larry Ellison of “powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world.”

A spokesperson for the David Ellison-run enterprise said the company was “as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”

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Ruffalo took to Instagram with a years-old clip of Paramount board member Safra Catz discussing “really profoundly scary technologies” that Oracle used to assist the Israeli military following the Oct. 7 terror attacks. That 2023 event saw Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals and abducted 251 people. Ruffalo referred to Larry Ellison as a “classic Oligarch,” and warned of the danger of his son’s bid to combine Paramount with Warner Bros. Discovery.

“This brings us to a moment to lower the temperature, not raise it. We’d rather build than further engage in such rhetoric.  This simply exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction,” the Paramount statement continued. “On the other hand, our commitment to great content is matched by our commitment to acceptance – to every story, every storyteller, and no blacklists, no exceptions, for anyone.”

More to come …