Oppose genocide? Don’t expect to get a job at Paramount anytime soon. As per a new report in Variety, the storied studio has apparently decided it’s firmly in favor of the mass murder of civilians and won’t be employing anyone who sticks their head over the parapet to say “uh, maybe intentionally starving children to death is wrong”.
Variety’s article details the first 100 days of new Paramount Skydance CEO Tom Ellison, who the outlet claims is “leveraging his family’s extraordinary wealth and access to President Trump”.
That coziness with the Trump administration apparently also means falling into ideological lockstep with all things MAGA. As per Variety’s sources, “Paramount maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be “overtly antisemitic”.”
You can almost certainly translate that as “critical of Israel”. Variety links this to Film Workers for Palestine’s open letter and pledge signed by over 4,000 actors, directors, and other entertainment industry professionals, including Emma Stone, Joaquin Phoenix, Olivia Colman, Mark Ruffalo, and Javier Bardem.
The letter called for a boycott of specific Israeli film institutions deemed “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people” through actions like “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them.”
Opposing genocide? Not on Paramount’s lot…
Paramount instantly hit back – the only major studio to do so – putting out a statement saying:
“At Paramount, we believe in the power of storytelling to connect and inspire people, promote mutual understanding, and preserve the moments, ideas, and events that shape the world we share. This is our creative mission. We do not agree with recent efforts to boycott Israeli filmmakers.”
Paramount employees were horrified, forming an anonymous group called Paramount Employees of Conscience:
“As Paramount employees, we refuse to have our labor used to endorse complicity in the brutalization and erasure of an entire population. “We do not and will not support the leadership team’s attempts to align a publicly traded American company with the intentions, actions, and propaganda arm of a foreign government.
…
We stand with our colleagues of conscience across the industry who are demanding justice, and we affirm the call for a boycott of institutions that are complicit in war crimes, apartheid, and genocide as a legitimate, ethical, and necessary act of solidarity.”
But it seems that Ellison is determined to, as Variety explains, “entwine the studio’s content more closely with MAGA messaging.” That means that criticism of Israel will not be tolerated, and it certainly seems to be the case that any actor or creative who signed that letter is no longer welcome on the Paramount lot.
