‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ Star Mark Ruffalo Fires Back at Antisemitism Accusations Over Paramount-Warner Bros. Merger

Corporate mergers rarely generate this much public drama, but the fight over Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has become something closer to a full-blown Hollywood feud. What began as industry pushback over job losses and editorial independence has evolved into a much thornier argument about language, intent and accusations of antisemitism.

Mark Ruffalo has been at the center of that fight for weeks, using his platform to argue the merger would consolidate too much power in too few hands. His latest broadside, however, didn’t stop at business concerns, and it’s now drawn a sharp rebuke from Paramount itself.

The controversy escalated after Ruffalo posted a video on his Instagram story featuring former Oracle chief Safra Catz, who now serves as the company’s executive vice chair and sits on Paramount Skydance’s board. In the clip, Catz can be heard describing “profoundly scary technologies” Oracle had built and made available in connection with Israel’s military effort, remarks she originally delivered at the Israeli-American Council National Summit in 2024.

Ruffalo paired the resurfaced clip with pointed commentary of his own, describing the war in Gaza as a genocide he said was “built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle.” He went further, connecting Larry Ellison’s company directly to the pending media deal by noting that the technology “will most likely be merged into one of the largest media conglomerates in the world and one day used on you.”

That framing quickly drew backlash from Paramount and pro-Israel advocacy voices, who accused Ruffalo of invoking antisemitic tropes by tying Jewish-associated wealth and corporate power together in his criticism. A company spokesperson said Paramount is troubled whenever such tropes are invoked in the service of a business dispute.

Rather than walking back his comments, Ruffalo used social media to directly reject the antisemitism label being applied to him. “Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people,” Ruffalo wrote in his response, arguing that legitimate criticism was being dishonestly reframed as hostility toward an entire religious group.

He went on to describe how deeply his understanding of activism and humanism has been shaped by Jewish friends, colleagues and loved ones throughout his life, pushing back on any suggestion that his politics stem from prejudice rather than principle. Ruffalo also used the moment to bring up the ongoing antitrust lawsuit filed by a coalition of attorneys general, which Paramount has said remains the only real obstacle left standing between the company and a completed deal.

The Larry Ellison connection has become one of the more combustible threads in this entire saga. Larry Ellison co-founded Oracle decades ago, while his son, David Ellison, now serves as CEO of Paramount, giving the family a direct financial and operational link between the tech company and the studio at the heart of the merger fight.

Oracle’s footprint has expanded well beyond its traditional software roots in recent years, growing into a major player in artificial intelligence and even holding a stake in TikTok’s U.S. operations. That expanding reach, paired with its documented ties to Israeli military technology efforts, has made the company an increasingly frequent target for critics of the ongoing war in Gaza, including supporters of the broader Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

For Ruffalo, tying that corporate history to a $111 billion media deal that would hand control of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros. to a single family was central to his argument, regardless of how the framing has since been received. Whether that argument holds up under continued scrutiny or fuels further accusations likely depends on which side of this increasingly public and personal dispute people are already standing on.

With the merger fight still unresolved and tempers clearly running high on both sides, this particular chapter of Hollywood’s ongoing power struggle doesn’t appear to be cooling down anytime soon.

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