Hollywood A-lister gets embarrassing dressing down from Paramount after ‘genocide’ remarks

A Hollywood A-lister who accused Paramount of being complicit ‘in what we now have come to see as a genocide’ received a fiery response from David Ellison’s multimedia giant.

Award-winning actor Mark Ruffalo, 58, blasted Paramount in a post on Instagram Stories on Friday, in which he accused billionaires Ellison, 43, and his father Larry, 82, of ‘powering some of the most destructive and inhuman forces in the world’.

Ruffalo shared a years-old video of Israeli-American business executive Safra Catz, the former Oracle CEO who is now its executive vice chair of the board of directors.

‘This is the company that Larry Ellison is using to fund his son David’s Warner Bros acquisition,’ Ruffalo wrote to his 20.5 million followers.

Paramount quickly issued a forceful response, saying they were ‘as always, troubled when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute’, according to CNN’s Brian Stelter.

‘Words like ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ applied to a corporate transaction, aren’t just wrong — they’re a bridge too far, and they cheapen the very real suffering those words are meant to describe,’ a Paramount spokesman added.

The statement continued: ‘This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.’

The media conglomerate emphasized that it was ‘a moment to lower the temperature, not raise it’, insisting that it would ‘rather build than further engage in such rhetoric’.

Paramount said that Ruffalo’s remarks ‘simply exposes the true motivation of some who have advocated opposition to this transaction’, referring to its proposed $110billion merger with Warner Bros.

The company said it was committed ‘to every story, every storyteller, and no blacklists, no exceptions, for anyone’.

‘We understand people feel strongly about this merger and are hopeful and expect that it will be judged based on the legal merits, not underlying bias,’ Paramount continued.

Paramount’s statement finished by asking for ‘less rhetoric, more understanding’.

In his Instagram story, Ruffalo asked, ‘Why has Trump pushed this illegal merger through?’

Ruffalo also called Larry Ellison a ‘classic oligarch’ who would own most of what he disparagingly coined ‘Para Bros’.

‘They are crushing workers and consolidating the wealth of the world for their own power and concentrated dominance,’ Ruffalo wrote.

Ruffalo noted that 12 Attorneys General were suing to stop the Paramount-Warner Bros merger.

‘It will be catastrophic for our film industry,’ Ruffalo wrote. ‘Merger [sic] like this are almost always bad for workers, consumers, and the industry they tend to dominate.’

The effort to stop the merger is being led by California, whose film industry has struggled in recent times.

Paramount’s merger with Warner Bros could cost Los Angeles County approximately 4,500 film and television jobs, according to a report published by LA County on Tuesday.

The video of Ms Catz speaking that Ruffalo shared was from the Israeli-American Council National Summit in 2024, per the Hollywood Reporter.

Ruffalo wrote in his Instagram story: ‘Look how she revels in what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.’ 

In the clip, Catz talked about advancing ‘the agenda for the Israeli military’ and mentioned ‘really profoundly scary technology at Oracle’.

‘We wanted to make sure that it was available for the effort,’ she said, referring to the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israel.

The Daily Mail has reached out to Ruffalo’s representatives and Paramount for further comment.