Paramount blasts Mark Ruffalo's comment associating merger with 'genocide' against Palestinians

Mark Ruffalo is getting pushback from Paramount after the actor blasted Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison and his son, Larry Ellison, Oracle CEO and Trump donor, for their support of Israel. 

Ruffalo has been an outspoken critic of Paramount's pending $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discover, a plan being contested in the courts. The actor shared a video on Instagram in which Oracle's vice chair, Safra Catz touted the company's efforts to help Israel following the Oct. 7, 2023. 

Ruffalo included in his post a warning against the merger and what he called Oracle's complicity with "what we have now come to see as genocide" against Palestinians. He also claimed that President Donald Trump is pushing the "illegal" merger, Variety reported. 

Responding to Ruffalo's comments, a spokesperson for Paramount said that it's troubling "when antisemitic tropes are invoked in purported service of a business dispute. 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. This doesn’t deserve a response in kind — and to be clear, we don’t tolerate prejudice of any kind, against anyone.”