On April 13, 2026, more than 1,000 film and television industry workers denounced a media consolidation plan by signing an open letter opposing the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
The effort was organized by a number of advocacy groups, including the Future Film Coalition (of which Documentary editor Abby Sun is a board member), Democracy Defenders Fund, Free Press, and IDA (which publishes Documentary magazine), among others.
“Media consolidation has already weakened one of America’s most vital global industries—one that has long shaped culture and connected people around the world,” the letter reads.
The letter is signed by filmmakers, documentarians, and professionals from the film and television industry, expressing concern about the merger, which they believe prioritizes the interests of a small, powerful group over the public interest. Among its signatories are renowned documentary filmmakers, including Alex Gibney, Laura Poitras, Dawn Porter, Petra Costa, Liz Garbus, Roger Ross Williams, Steve Bognar, and Geeta Gandbhir.
“The bottom line is this: this merger is not a done deal,” Gandbhir, director of The Perfect Neighbor (2025), tells Documentary. “We are coming together now because there is still time to stop a transaction that would harm our communities, our creative economy, and consumers across the country.”
David Ellison, chief executive officer of Paramount Skydance, announced the company’s plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for $111 billion in February 2026. This acquisition jolted the film community—and documentarians in particular—due to its major impact on the industry. Signatories of the letter have reservations about Paramount owning both CBS and CNN.
“If the proposed Paramount–WBD merger goes through, Ellison would gain influence over yet another major news platform—CNN—a frequent target of Trump’s attacks,” says Tia Lessin, filmmaker of Steal This Story, Please! (2025) about the host of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman. “I’m deeply concerned that under such ownership, CNN could be reshaped—or even eliminated altogether.”
There is repeated apprehension about the political risks associated with industry monopolization. “The art, film, and journalism that expands us as people requires real courage and creative risk-taking to make and share,” says Kirsten Johnson, director of Cameraperson (2016). “We have to block this merger that seeks to make our work even more endangered than it already is.”
The diversity of stories may also be at stake, since many worry that consolidation would shrink the market due to industry concentration.
“Without a wide range of outlets for our work, competition cannot function. The providers of expression—us—are hostage to a media oligopoly. This then has profound political ramifications,” says Patricia Aufderheide, Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C.
David France, filmmaker, investigative journalist, and co-founder of Public Square Films, is concerned that stories made with investigative rigor on topics of activism and community empowerment won’t have outlets supporting their production and release. This could affect production companies like his own, which has a tradition of making films about the LGBTQ community, including How to Survive a Plague (2012) and Welcome to Chechnya (2020), both directed by France himself.
“We’re at an existential existential moment because if we lose that in documentary film, and if we lose access to audiences a lot of us will keep making those stories anyway. But if we don’t have distributors willing to bring them out to the world and if we have such a lack of competition, it’s easy to foreclose against certain kinds of stories,” says France. “Then we realize that this is a moment where we’re losing access to the real impact documentary films could have.”
We are coming together now because there is still time to stop a transaction that would harm our communities, our creative economy, and consumers across the country.
—Geeta Gandbhir, director of The Perfect Neighbor
Filmmakers also expressed unease about the merger’s impact on how we tell stories of the past, specifically on the accessibility and use of archives. Gandbhir brought up that decades of knowledge and expertise within the organization and in navigating archive collections could be severely impacted by the recent layoffs at the CNN Collection, which in turn would affect filmmakers who need that kind of support for their films.
“When archives are stripped of their stewards and absorbed into larger corporate systems, their mission often shifts—from preserving and enabling access to history, to maximizing profit,” says Gandbhir. “That shift has profound implications for who gets to tell stories about our past—and how those stories are told.”
Gandbhir echoes concerns from across the documentary industry, noting that opposing the merger is about standing up for independent voices in today’s media environment.
France highlights the importance of non-fiction storytelling to hold power to account and to seek justice. The medium is essential to raise the voices of those marginalized in society: “If we lose that, then there’s no other place for that to happen. I mean, we’re backed in the corner now.”
The letter, which has now amassed more than 4,000 total signatories, is only a first step. France says he is aware of multiple initiatives opposing the merger. The letter singles out the work of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who is scrutinizing the merger and possibly moving toward legal courses of action. If there’s one thing the letter insists on, it is the power of collective action.
“We’re just beginning now to bring our voices out against it and to try to understand what it means to us individually and as an industry,” says France.
Editor’s Note: Abby Sun was not involved in the editing of this piece.
