Adam Feil

The more I look at Paramount’s threat to leave California, the more I think the buildings are actually the easy part. And that's why Ellison is bluffing. Yes, Paramount and Warner Bros. could spend years building a massive production campus in Tennessee, Texas or somewhere else. It would cost billions, but this is already a $110 billion merger backed by roughly $47 billion in equity and tens of billions in debt. The harder question is whether the people who actually make the movies and television shows would follow them. That matters because more than 5,000 entertainment workers have already publicly opposed the merger, including major actors and filmmakers. And the financing itself already includes substantial backing from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority and an Abu Dhabi sovereign-wealth vehicle. So if relocating the combined company requires another multibillion-dollar buildout, how much more outside capital does Ellison need to bring in, and at what point does that become another concern for the creative community? You can build soundstages. You can move headquarters. You can get Tennessee to throw incentives at you. What you can’t build overnight is Hollywood’s labor pool, vendors, post-production ecosystem, agencies and talent relationships. That’s still why I think the California threat is mostly leverage. Moving Paramount is possible. Recreating Hollywood somewhere else is a much bigger gamble.