Paramount leaving California would bring Los Angeles to its knees economically. A leaked study puts the loss at up to 21 billion dollars a year
California would lose tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars a year if David Ellison follows through on his threat and moves Paramount Skydance out of the state. That is the conclusion of a leaked confidential analysis published by Politico and reported on by Variety.
What the numbers say
The study works with two scenarios. The milder one assumes relocating the headquarters and part of the operations: between October 2026 and September 2031, that would mean a loss of roughly 2,750 to 5,550 job-years across all sectors and a shortfall in economic output of between 1 and 2 billion dollars. A job-year corresponds to one full-time position for one year, so it is not the number of jobs lost.
The worse variant assumes a complete departure. In that case, according to the analysis, California would permanently lose approximately 29 to 58 thousand full-time jobs and 10.6 to 21.2 billion dollars in economic output a year.
Paramount declined to comment.
An ultimatum dated 1 October
In August, Ellison announced that he would start moving the company unless California Attorney General Rob Bonta and a coalition of other states sit down at the negotiating table and settle the lawsuit seeking to block the 111 billion dollar merger of Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery. Georgia, Texas and Tennessee are being considered as destinations.
The date is no coincidence. From 1 October, Paramount will start paying Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders a so-called ticking fee, 7 million dollars a day until the deal closes. The trial is scheduled for 2 March, which means that without a settlement the company faces a bill of approximately 1.3 billion dollars.
Talks that are not happening yet
At the end of August it briefly looked hopeful, with Bonta and Ellison arranging a meeting for 24 August. Bonta, however, cancelled it at the last minute, saying that the Paramount camp was leaking details of the talks to the media. The company denied it, but the attorney general did not back down and declared that he would not return to negotiations until the other side stopped its “lying leaks”.
“This illegal merger will lead to higher prices, less choice and fewer people making movies.”
Rob Bonta, Attorney General of the State of California
Who commissioned the study
An interesting detail is that the analysis was commissioned from the Institute for Applied Economics at the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation by Paramount itself. The document is dated 10 September and reached the media as a non-public working draft. The study itself points out that any commitments arising from a settlement with the attorneys general would change the final figures.
SOURCES: Variety, Politico, TheWrap, Washington Examiner