Los Angeles mayoral hopeful and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt released a lengthy, artificial-intelligence-assisted screed taking down the lawsuit filed by 12 state attorneys general against Paramount over its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. In a TikTok video, he shouts that Hollywood is kaput if the suit succeeds.
On July 20, a coalition of 12 states led by California filed a suit against Paramount to block its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The coalition includes New York and Colorado, among others. A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order pausing the merger earlier this week.
Pratt, the former MTV star who played the villain of reality TV hit The Hills 20 years ago, began leaning into Los Angeles city politics in 2025 after his Pacific Palisades home burned in one of the fires that engulfed parts of the city. Pratt and other area property owners filed a suit against the city of Los Angeles and its Department of Water and Power, alleging the fires were DWP’s fault; he also began blaming Mayor Karen Bass, citing a slow response.
Mad as hell about L.A. politics in the wake of the fires, he launched a campaign for mayor on the fire’s anniversary, positioning himself as a common-sense populist. In June, he came in third place behind Bass and City Councilmember Nithya Raman, after an initial count had put him more than eight percentage points ahead of her. He refused to accept the result and drew support from President Donald Trump (who already doomed his chances in L.A. with his vocal support) and House Speaker Mike Johnson; both claimed the race was fraudulent, once again without evidence.
Pratt had said he’d stay in L.A. to remain laser-focused on local politics. But with this new video, he’s gone national, training his screed on every state suing Paramount. Being a Californian, he naturally singles out Gov. Gavin Newsom and Attorney General Rob Bonta, claiming the two are destroying Hollywood as they try to “cripple two of the greatest film studios of all time over politics.”
“[Newsom and Bonta] are everything Paramount isn’t,” Pratt claims. “While Paramount and Tom Cruise have spent the last decades building up Hollywood, [these two] have been destroying it — chasing productions out of town, sending projects to Budapest, neglecting film tax credits and incentives to win back production, doing everything they can to cripple the film industry while Atlanta and Hungary steal our lunch. And now they’re suing Paramount to make sure the industry crumbles further, all because Paramount wants to invest $110 billion into Warner Bros.”
The 10-minute-plus clip splices in A.I.-generated cutaways from Pratt to clips of popular Hollywood movies. The former candidate channels Alex Jones, sitting behind a desk and yelling into the camera as he argues the state’s leaders want jobs out of California. Citing a clip from a podcast interview with Bonta, he notes that tech giants like Amazon aren’t named in the lawsuit despite making blockbusters with major theatrical releases — Pratt cites Top Gun: Maverick and dubs its star “Saint Tom Cruise.”
In the clip, Pratt also tries to shoot down Bonta’s claim that a Paramount–Warner Bros. Discovery merger would reduce production, arguing other factors were at play.
“They claim that after Disney acquired Fox, production decreased. Notice they specifically say after they merged — they don’t say because they merged, because something else happened after that 2019 merger that may have had an impact on production,” he says. “Yeah, they merged right before COVID, but Gavin Newsom shut down the entire state and followed that with the biggest, most prolonged labor dispute in Hollywood history. Everybody’s production decreased.”
Pratt also points to what he calls political motivation behind the opposition, noting the lack of similar scrutiny over Amazon’s MGM acquisition, and that streamers like YouTube weren’t named in the suit — inconvenient, he argues, for the theory of a Paramount monopoly.
“This isn’t the ’80s, Rob. Streaming has changed everything. More and more people get their content online, which means fewer and fewer are watching traditional cable. The trend line only goes in one direction,” he says in the clip.
Pratt closes out the rant with high praise for Paramount, which he credits with saving the industry.
“There’s a ton of competition for these studios,” Pratt claims. “This whole lawsuit is a scam. He needs to quit playing petty politics and crippling Hollywood.”
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