Tom Cruise has come out in support of Paramount’s controversial Warner Bros takeover deal. “I think it’s awesome,” he says. There are thousands of Hollywood actors and filmmakers who are vocally opposed to Paramount’s planned $110bn takeover of Warner Bros. Tom Cruise isn’t one of them. Speaking on The Pat McAfee Show in the wake ... Warner-Paramount merger | Tom Cruise thinks it’s “awesome”
Tom Cruise has come out in support of Paramount’s controversial Warner Bros takeover deal. “I think it’s awesome,” he says.
There are thousands of Hollywood actors and filmmakers who are vocally opposed to Paramount’s planned $110bn takeover of Warner Bros. Tom Cruise isn’t one of them.
Speaking on The Pat McAfee Show in the wake of the Days Of Thunder 2 announcement, The Mummy and Rock Of Ages star was enthusiastic in his support for the Paramount-Warner deal.
“I think it’s awesome,” he said, in a quote that is likely to be shared all over the place in the coming days.
Cruise appears to believe Paramount CEO David Ellison’s pledge that the merged studio will commit to making 30 movies a year. In fact, Cruise talks about it like moon shot project that will require Hollywood to set aside its differences in order to achieve that target.
“I know we’re going to get those 30 movies,” Cruise said (as transcribed by Deadline). “I want us all to come together as a community to help make those 30 movies. It’s not just going to be, you know, Paramount doing it. Everyone’s going to need all the help of every artist to be able to do it.”
It’s worth noting here that Paramount is behind racing legacy sequel Days Of Thunder 2, and that Cruise has a longstanding partnership with Ellison and his production company Skydance Media, which purchased Paramount in 2024 – it bankrolled such movies as Jack Reacher and all the Mission: Impossible movies stretching back to 2015’s Rogue Nation.
That’s worth bearing in mind when Cruise brings his brand of optimism to a merger that could change Hollywood forever. While Paramount itself may insists that the Para-Warn behemoth will be able to “greenlight more projects, back bold ideas”, the deal’s detractors – and history – suggest that mergers result in fewer jobs and filmmaking opportunities rather than more.
Certainly, the recent story of Warner Bros itself, which has been purchased, merged with and generally pushed and pulled about multiple times over the past quarter of a century, is a cautionary one.
Earlier this year, hundreds of directors and filmmakers signed an open letter that opposed the takeover – Bryan Cranston, Emma Thompson, David Fincher, Denis Villeneuve and Celine Song are among the more eye-catching names.
In June, the proposed deal was put on pause when a coalition of 12 US states, led by attorney general Rob Bonta, sued to block the deal pending further scrutiny.
Ellison, in a move that we wouldn’t for one second describe as a hissy fit, threatened that he’d move his entire studio operation out of California if it wasn’t allowed to go through in the next few months.
Around the same time Cruise was on The Pat McAfee show, the Block The Merger coalition released a new video.
“No matter what Paramount promises,” actor Hannah Einbinder says in that video, “this mega merger – the largest financial transaction in Hollywood history – would cause massive layoffs and cuts to programming.”
