There was a tremor felt in Los Angeles recently, but the weird thing is, it was ONLY in LA.
Hmmmmm...what could have caused this mysterious seismic shif...uh oh.
Paramount is looking for Nashville office space as it weighs leaving LA
DANGER WILL ROBINSON!
Paramount Skydance is actively looking for office space in Nashville — a sign the company is seriously considering moving at least some operations from Los Angeles amid the legal fight over its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, according to two people familiar with the search who were granted anonymity to discuss it.
Paramount, headquartered in Hollywood, has sought about 400,000 square feet of space in the Tennessee capital that it could move into in two to three years, according to one of the people. However, no existing building there has a vacancy that aligns with the company’s needs and timeline, the person said.
Representatives of the studio have also reached out to at least two real estate developers about constructing new offices in Nashville that the company could occupy in three years, the person said. Paramount representatives were recently shown a vacant multi-acre parcel outside of downtown Nashville where the company could build new headquarters, according to the other person with knowledge of the matter.
Paramount declined to comment.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta is a party to the 12-state lawsuit that was filed against the company's plans to merge with Warner Bros., and negotiations have been ongoing since Paramount's CEO, David Ellison, threatened to move the legendary company to Texas, Tennessee, or Georgia if the states didn't come up with some sort of settlement plan by the beginning of October.
Oh, pshaw! say Paramount skeptics, who point out the company is merely disgruntled at the antitrust suits that have piled up against it (the Writers' Guild has also filed one, for instance), and these threats are simply hardball tactics in defense of their beleaguered plans.
Paramount, they rightly point out, is a Hollywood institution, and smugly assert the company is too intertwined with Los Angeles ever to leave. Why, my goodness, dismissive scoffers say, Paramount is as LA as the Hollywood sign.
THEY WOULDN'T DARE
Yesterday it seemed as if that annoying rippling in the ground suddenly became severe shaking underneath the inept, clueless, and corrupt communist sitting in the mayor's chair, because Karen Bass issued an extraordinary social media statement when Variety broke the story that, yes, indeedy doodah - Paramount was thinking of leaving.
I'm going to let you in on a little secret they didn't teach you in activist economics in Cuba… they're leaving because leftists like you make it impossible to run a business.
— Nick Freitas (@NickJFreitas) September 17, 2026
It's as if someone had just told the mayor and she jumped from her desk in shock and surprise, shrieking, 'Somebody has to do something! HOW did this happen?!'
Oddly enough, some smart-a** young guy named Spencer Pratt kept talking even after being screwed out of the LA mayoral primary race, about Paramount's situation, how it would affect Los Angeles if they left, and why they would leave, as he ripped into Bass's abuse and neglect of the city's film industry in general.
By then, Paramount will have already paid $210M in unnecessary fees (not even counting legal fees). Budget for Top Gun Maverick was only $177M and it grossed over $1.5B. Imagine what Paramount could've done with that money, how many filmworkers employed, but for Bonehead Bonta https://t.co/ikqreQ4QEO
— Spencer Pratt (@spencerpratt) September 11, 2026
Pratt's rant exposed and explained what CA officials had done to their homegrown golden goose by targeting Paramount while excluding similar mergers in the industry.
...“[Newsom and Bonta] are everything Paramount isn’t,” Pratt claims. “While Paramount and Tom Cruise have spent the last decades building up Hollywood, [these two] have been destroying it — chasing productions out of town, sending projects to Budapest, neglecting film tax credits and incentives to win back production, doing everything they can to cripple the film industry while Atlanta and Hungary steal our lunch. And now they’re suing Paramount to make sure the industry crumbles further, all because Paramount wants to invest $110 billion into Warner Bros.”
The 10-minute-plus clip splices in A.I.-generated cutaways from Pratt to clips of popular Hollywood movies. The former candidate channels Alex Jones, sitting behind a desk and yelling into the camera as he argues the state’s leaders want jobs out of California. Citing a clip from a podcast interview with Bonta, he notes that tech giants like Amazon aren’t named in the lawsuit despite making blockbusters with major theatrical releases — Pratt cites Top Gun: Maverick and dubs its star “Saint Tom Cruise.”
In the clip, Pratt also tries to shoot down Bonta’s claim that a Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger would reduce production, arguing other factors were at play.
“They claim that after Disney acquired Fox, production decreased. Notice they specifically say after they merged — they don’t say because they merged, because something else happened after that 2019 merger that may have had an impact on production,” he says. “Yeah, they merged right before COVID, but Gavin Newsom shut down the entire state and followed that with the biggest, most prolonged labor dispute in Hollywood history. Everybody’s production decreased.”
Pratt also points to what he calls political motivation behind the opposition, noting the lack of similar scrutiny over Amazon’s MGM acquisition, and that streamers like YouTube weren’t named in the suit — inconvenient, he argues, for the theory of a Paramount monopoly.
“This isn’t the ’80s, Rob. Streaming has changed everything. More and more people get their content online, which means fewer and fewer are watching traditional cable. The trend line only goes in one direction,” he says in the clip.
Bass must have missed the message and only recently got a memo.
By yesterday afternoon, Paramount, the state, and Bass were this close to announcing a permanent Splitsville.
Thanks to @RobBonta!
— Roxanne Hoge (@RoxanneHoge) September 16, 2026
And an assist from @CA_Dem!
It certainly doesn't help matters that the CA AG calls not being willing to roll over and play dead for him 'blackmail.'
Paramount brass have told key officials and stakeholders the company is “deadly serious” about leaving California and the home of Hollywood after more than 100 years, sources tell Deadline. Among those told a deposit has been put down on the moving trucks is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and state Attorney General Rob Bonta. The AG joined with 11 other states to file an antitrust lawsuit against the $110 billion merger. The Writers Guild of America has also sued.
...Bonta has over the past several months called out Paramount for engaging in “blackmail” in its efforts to sway the court of public opinion over the merger. He is likely to express that sentiment again on Thursday at a conference in New York City, where he is slated to appear on an antitrust panel along with AGs from Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.
As the exit plan appeared to be taking more concrete shape on Wednesday, the AGs office again accused Paramount of saber-rattling.
“We cannot comment on a company’s plans,” a spokesperson for AG Bonta told Deadline Wednesday over the moving notice. “It’s no secret that Paramount has been making this threat, despite its alleged commitment to California and Hollywood. What Paramount decides to do is Paramount’s choice alone. We’ll continue to apply the law without fear or favor and continue to be open to coming to the table for good faith discussions.”
TMZ got word that Paramount had quit the negotiations in disgust...
🚨 Paramount told negotiators, "we're done," next 48 hours critical.
— TMZ (@TMZ) September 16, 2026
Exclusive: https://t.co/Y4cmeHVmPp pic.twitter.com/1K4mSdrcrg
...but then came back as, I would imagine, state officials spazzed.
And it's all still on very thin ice.
...Paramount told California officials negotiating a settlement Tuesday, "we're done" ... and said the studio was moving out of California, but our sources now say they are back at the bargaining table, but the clock is running out.
Sources directly involved in the negotiation tell TMZ ... State and L.A. officials were planning on a statement from Paramount Tuesday, announcing its move out of Cali. But, one key source says, "We're back in a constructive place, but still in a red zone." The source adds, "It's by no means terminal, but the next 48 hour are critical." We're told if a settlement is possible, it's gonna come in the next 2 days ... otherwise, it's not going to happen.
The immediate ramifications for Los Angeles are immense, whatever blustering about 'they can't do this to us' Bonta spews for public consumption.
...A copy of the report published by Politico reads, “At a minimum, relocating Paramount’s headquarters and other operations out of California would result in losses of 2,750 and 5,550 job-years in California across all industries and losses of between $1.01 billion and $2.03 billion in economic output between October 1, 2026, and September 30, 2031.”
And the long-term outlook for a state bleeding big companies is even more sour.
...The report went on to outline some big-picture stats for if and when Paramount Skydance completed the move: “Once Paramount completed the entire relocation of its headquarters and other operations out of California, the state would experience the permanent loss of approximately 28,990 to 57,980 full-time jobs statewide across all industries, and losses of between $10.6 billion and $21.2 billion annually in economic output.”
Paramount is also up against a hard financial deadline related to the merger tender, which is part of the calculus for California to settle or the company to get off the pot. The company also has a court hearing next month over a bond Paramount has requested from plaintiffs to cover the losses it anticipates from having to pay that same tender.
...The limbo state of the merger since the mid-July filing of the lawsuits has ratcheted up anxiety levels in an industry already contending with the rise of Big Tech, production leaving the U.S. and other challenges. The trial date of March 2 feels like an eternity from now for an industry on edge. The parties will hold court-ordered settlement meetings next month and a hearing will be held next week on Paramount’s request for a $1.88 billion bond from the plaintiffs to cover “extraordinary losses” the company anticipates due to having to pay a “ticking fee” during litigation. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.
Ellison’s big move to move comes almost two weeks before the October 1 date when the ticking fee, which Paramount voluntarily added as a sweetener in its battle with Netflix over buying WBD, starts kicking in. At roughly $7.2 million a day, the fee would reach $635 million for the full quarter, paid directly to WBD shareholders.
Blustering Bonta is stubbornly dug in, Bass is fighting 'like hell,' and might as well be from a bunker in Ghana for all its effectiveness. Meanwhile, Paramount is in neighboring states, checking out what suitable properties are available and measuring for new drapes.
My headline refers to the Paramount logo and an ancient proverb by Horace I fell in love with many years ago:
'Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus' ~ the mountain has labored and brought forth a ridiculous mouse
I felt like a riff on it seemed so apt.
Paramount, like so many abused homegrown California companies before it, is laboring through a mighty battle that could well be a final rear-guard action as it simply packs up and leaves. As Chevron did. As Silicon Valley has.
As so many others have.
Leaving their pyrrhic win to the smugly victorious but ultimately ridiculous California mice.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has been infected by socialism, and it's spreading FAST. Democrats are claiming there's nothing to worry about, but we know the truth.
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