Julius Young — Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Vantage
The WGA filed its own antitrust suit the same week as the state AGs. The labor-market theory of harm it asserts is a new development in the relationship between creative workers and corporate Hollywood.
The 12-state lawsuit got the headlines. But the WGA filed its own separate suit the same week, arguing labor-market harm: that consolidating Paramount and WBD reduces the number of buyers competing for writers' work, suppresses wages, and reduces creative diversity. Paramount described Netflix's opposition as a scorched-earth competitive campaign. The WGA's standing is harder to dismiss — writers are not a competitor to Paramount, they are the people who make the product Paramount sells. The merger has opened a new front in a much older argument about who the industry actually belongs to. Related: Hollywood Has Lost 25% of Its Jobs Since 2022