Making Entertainment Great Again

“Larry Ellison is a friend of mine. He’s a great guy… I think he’s going to run CBS really well, and I think he’s making a good deal to buy it.” — Donald Trump, July 3, 2025

On July 2 Paramount settled a suit with Donald Trump for $16 million. He had sued CBS over the way that CBS News‘ 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 presidential election, and Paramount had no desire to go to court against the winner of the presidential election whose FCC was in a position to decide about its highly lucrative deal with Skydance.

The settlement was finalized pre-acquisition of Paramount by Skydance and was widely considered to be some grease to smooth the skids to make the merger happen. After all, during the first Trump Administration it blocked AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, as the president was unhappy with his treatment by CNN, which was a Time Warner property. (The merger did occur, after lengthy court battles.)

Many thought that the Trump/Paramount nexus had finished after the completion of the Skydance deal, but last week the UFC officially announced a fight would be occurring on the White House lawn on July 4, 2026, the 250^th celebration of the establishment of the U.S. Perhaps not coincidentally, also last week Paramount announced it will be the exclusive distributor of UFC’s fights starting in 2026.

This is a non-trivial announcement. The distribution rights will last seven years. During the first year it will include “UFC’s full slate of 13 marquee numbered events and 30 Fight Nights.” While not mentioned specifically, it is hard to imagine that “Rumble in the Rose Garden” won’t be part of it.

Paramount is ponying up $1.1 billion for the rights.

On July 3, when previewing the event at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., President Trump said, “We’re going to have a UFC fight — imagine this — on the White House lawn. We have a lot of land there. It’s going to be a championship fight, a full fight, like 20,000 to 25,000 people. Dana White is going to organize it. Dana is great, one of a kind.”

The subject of great people brings us full circle back to Paramount. Larry Ellison is the father of David Ellison, the chairman and CEO of Paramount, about whom Trump said in June would “do a great job” heading up the company. There’s a lot of greatness in Trump’s orbit.

And There’s This

In David Ellison’s open letter after the merger he writes: “Moving forward, we will work with conviction and optimism to transform Paramount into a tech-forward company that blends the creative heart of Hollywood with the innovative spirit of Silicon Valley. By harnessing cutting-edge technologies to serve great story telling, we will unlock the company’s enormous potential.”

What might the “spirit of Silicon Valley” mean in this context? Given the number of layoffs in that part of the world over the past several months, that spirit might not be a friendly one.

Ellison went on to write:

“From virtual production stages that unleash filmmakers’ limitless imaginations, to AI‑assisted localization that brings shows to new language markets overnight, to a proprietary ad‑tech stack that maximizes yield across streaming and linear platforms, we will thoughtfully integrate these tools into every aspect of our work.”

This seems like good, tech-forward meaningless jargon but it has a very specific and significant ramifications and not just for location scouts who might be replaced by some amped-up version of Google Earth, or who will simply not matter because “AI-assisted localization” will create locations on an ala carte approach. The SAG-AFTRA contract, bitterly fought out across strike lines in 2023, includes language regarding the use of AI vis-à-vis actors. There are distinctions between “Digital Replicas,” which is basing a fake on a human, and “Synthetic Performers,” which are predicated on code. The point is essentially that if replicas are used, human actors need to consent be compensated.

In other words, as things stand now, the studios need to pay in order to use the images and likenesses of actors, the abilities of Google’s Veo 3 or OpenAI’s Sora notwithstanding.

But agreements are only as good as the mechanisms that enforce them.

Which brings us back to Washington.

In “Winning the Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” the Trump Administration says: “Today, the bottleneck to harnessing AI’s full potential is not necessarily the availability of models, tools, or applications. Rather, it is the limited and slow adoption of AI, particularly within large, established organizations.”

The “Action Plan” plans to bust bottlenecks that are inhibiting the use of AI by companies.

Paramount is a “large, established organization.” But the “spirit of Silicon Valley” notwithstanding, there are guardrails regarding the use of AI in filmmaking in the SAG-AFTRA contract that may seem to actors to be protections but by studios as bottlenecks.

When it comes to protecting workers it is worth knowing the Trump Administration has signed executive orders cancelling collective bargaining agreements for over one-million federal employees. Yes, they had contracts. Until they didn’t.

Not only did those agreements with the government disappear with the stroke of a Sharpie, the cancelation is perceived as a signal to the private sector that the federal government will no longer enforce federal labor protections — like protecting the rights of union members.

A historic role of the U.S. Department of Labor has been to defend and support labor unions. A historic role of the Environmental Protection Agency has been to protect the air we breathe. But recently the EPA has announced it will no longer be fining vehicle manufacturers if they produce cars and trucks that have emissions violations related to fuel economy.

Given that context, isn’t it plausible that the current U.S. Department of Labor would ignore violations of things like the SAG-AFTRA contract?

Would it be a leap to assume Paramount could become the first studio to more extensively deploy AI “tools into every aspect of our work”, including using more digital replicas, which are more cost-effective.

In Ellison’s open letter he says the company is concentrating on “Driving efficiency enterprise-wide with a focus on long-term free cash flow generation.” Presumably images created by a suite of NVIDIA processors are more efficient than emotional actors.

Remember: President Trump has an eye on how he can disrupt anyone who opposes him and that definitely includes the entertainment industry. That’s why he appointed the very real Jon Voight, Mel Gibson and Sylvester Stallone “Special Ambassadors to a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California,” 

So were the company to decide to go the AI route, would there by any consequences beyond famous actors carrying signs on Melrose Avenue?