Two of Hollywood's largest labor unions are urging California's attorney general to settle or fast-track an antitrust case against the $111 billion Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger, putting them on a collision course with fellow unions that want the deal stopped cold.
Leaders of the Directors Guild of America and the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees sent a letter Wednesday to California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, pressing both sides to negotiate a resolution or, failing that, move the trial date up from March 2027. The letter laid out a blunt case: below-the-line workers in film and television cannot afford two more years of legal limbo while productions stall and jobs vanish.
DGA Executive Director Russell Hollander and IATSE President Matthew Loeb co-signed the appeal. Their argument is grounded in numbers that should alarm anyone who cares about working Americans in the entertainment industry. IATSE reported that hours worked by its members in 2025 fell nearly 36 percent compared to 2022. A union source told The Hollywood Reporter that DGA employment dropped 40 percent over the same period.
Those are not rounding errors. They represent tens of thousands of camera operators, grips, gaffers, costume designers, assistant directors, and stage managers, skilled tradespeople who build the sets, light the scenes, and keep productions running, watching their livelihoods shrink year after year.
Hollander and Loeb framed the stakes in unusually direct terms for two guilds known for preferring diplomacy over public confrontation. In their letter, they wrote:
"We cannot overemphasize how damaging the current timeline for the trial... is to an already struggling industry."
They also conceded a point that undercuts any accusation of corporate cheerleading. "We have been consistent in our view that mergers, such as this one, historically offer few benefits to workers," they wrote. But the letter argued that the consequences of prolonged uncertainty, productions shelved, budgets frozen, crews idled, are worse than a negotiated settlement with binding conditions.
The unions did not ask Bonta to drop the case. They asked him to settle it, or at least speed it up. The New York Post reported that the DGA and IATSE specifically requested the trial be moved from March to November, a timeline that aligns with Ellison's preferred schedule. The unions also urged Ellison to come to the table and negotiate directly with the attorney general's office.
Paramount's board has already approved a plan to relocate its Hollywood studio out of California if Bonta does not agree to settlement talks by October 1. That threat hangs over every worker in the industry who depends on production staying in Los Angeles.
Not every Hollywood union sees it the same way. The Writers Guild of America backed Bonta's antitrust suit and went further, filing its own separate lawsuit to block the merger outright. In that filing, the WGA argued that combining Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery would gut competition for writers.
The guild's lawsuit stated:
"The Merger would eliminate competition for buying film and television writing, resulting in suppressed compensation, worse deal terms, and reduced programming volume and diversity."
The WGA called the transaction a threat to "the economic and creative health of the American entertainment industry." SAG-AFTRA, the actors' union, also backed the state regulators' suit and demanded what it called "enforceable safeguards against reduced production by the studios with guarantees of increases in the percentage of productions made in the USA."
So the split is clean. The DGA and IATSE, unions representing the crew members who physically build and operate productions, want the legal fight resolved fast, even if that means a settlement. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA, unions representing the writers and performers whose names appear on screen, want the merger blocked or loaded with conditions heavy enough to reshape it.
The Teamsters, whose motion picture division covers drivers, location managers, and other logistics workers, occupy a middle lane. The union previously called on the Department of Justice to block the deal unless specific conditions were met. But Teamsters motion picture division head Lindsay Dougherty has not joined the DGA and IATSE in pleading with state attorneys general to devise a settlement.
Dougherty's position is skeptical of both sides. She called on Paramount Skydance to "stop playing games and show us more of your commitment to the workforce." In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, she pressed harder:
"Touting worker prosperity, without commitments, while simultaneously threatening their livelihood in the press as a bargaining chip begs the question, what is in this deal for American film and television workers?"
Dougherty also warned against rushing to close the deal on corporate terms. "Fast-tracking corporate greed often leads to the creative and skilled workforce losing," she said. Her union has not yet seen data from Paramount Skydance illustrating how the merger would benefit the industry and its workers.
That demand for receipts is reasonable. Ellison has claimed the merger would benefit workers, but the Teamsters want binding commitments, not press releases. And Ellison's simultaneous threat to pull Paramount out of Los Angeles if the lawsuit is not settled by October 1 makes the "worker prosperity" pitch harder to take at face value.
The damage is not hypothetical. Breitbart reported that the DGA and IATSE joint letter cited specific harm already underway: productions put on hold or canceled altogether because of uncertainty surrounding the merger. "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," the unions wrote.
Paramount is also contractually obligated to pay roughly $650 million per quarter to Warner Bros. shareholders until the merger closes, with payments beginning after September 30. Every quarter the legal fight drags on costs the combined entity money that could otherwise flow toward production budgets and crew employment.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall weighed in on the broader dispute, arguing that Bonta's lawsuit is "more about politics than law." Whether or not that characterization is fair, the practical result of a trial date set for March 2027 is clear: nearly two more years of frozen investment, shelved projects, and idle workers in an industry already reeling from the 2023 writers' and actors' strikes.
Hollywood's workforce was already in trouble before the merger fight began. The 2023 strikes shut down production across the industry. Work has begun to rebound since then, but not nearly fast enough. The DGA's 40 percent employment decline and IATSE's 36 percent drop in hours worked since 2022 reflect a compounding crisis: strikes, the rise of streaming economics that favor fewer and cheaper projects, production outsourcing from California, and now a mega-merger mired in litigation.
The WGA itself saw a significant downturn in jobs following its 2023 strike. That guild went into negotiations with studios and streamers while much of its own staff was on strike, a detail that speaks to the internal pressures these organizations face even as they try to shape industry policy. The WGA also launched its high-profile campaign against talent agencies back in 2019, a fight that consumed years of institutional energy.
DGA president Christopher Nolan, yes, the filmmaker behind some of the biggest blockbusters of the last two decades, has not been quoted publicly in the merger dispute. But the guild he leads has historically favored pragmatism over confrontation. The letter to Bonta and Ellison fits that pattern: acknowledge the merger's risks, then push for the fastest resolution that protects workers rather than holding out for a courtroom victory that may not come until 2027.
The core tension in this fight is not really between unions. It is between two powerful figures, a Democratic attorney general and a billionaire studio CEO, whose legal standoff is grinding an entire workforce into the ground while they maneuver for advantage.
Bonta has not publicly responded to the DGA-IATSE letter. Ellison has not publicly committed to the binding worker protections that every union, even the ones urging settlement, has demanded. The $111 billion merger remains in legal limbo, the trial remains scheduled for March 2027, and the people who actually make movies and television shows remain caught in between.
Hollander and Loeb put it plainly in their letter: the benefits and drawbacks of the merger should be measured against what happens if it falls apart entirely. That is a practical argument, not a corporate one. If Warner Bros. Discovery's future remains uncertain, the retreat in jobs the unions have already documented will only accelerate.
When the people who build the sets, wire the lights, and drive the trucks are begging for a resolution, any resolution, while the lawyers and politicians circle each other for two more years, the system is not working for the workers it claims to protect.