Free Press Circles the Oscars With a Mobile Billboard Protesting Paramount’s Terrible Takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery

LOS ANGELES — Starting Friday, a mobile billboard parodying Paramount Skydance owner David Ellison will be circling the Dolby Theater, site of Sunday’s Academy Awards. The billboard is a roving protest of Ellison’s plans to take over Warner Bros. Discovery and transform the resulting media colossus into a mouthpiece for Donald Trump’s authoritarian agenda.

The billboard urges members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to consider Ellison’s performance for the imaginary “Best Performance in a Puppet Show” category. It displays both an English and Spanish version of the sign.

It will travel streets adjacent to the Dolby Theater’s Hollywood Blvd. location, from Friday, March 13, through Sunday, March 15 — also making trips to Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Studios. 

Free Press’ billboard action is in response to news that Warner Bros. Discovery had accepted Paramount Skydance’s $110 billion acquisition offer, placing both studios — along with major news and entertainment outlets including CBS, CNN, HBO, Discovery and Nickelodeon — under a single owner. Paramount’s bid was aided by the president’s expressed preference that his political ally David Ellison and his centibillionaire father, Larry, would do Trump’s bidding to shape the media message to the White House’s liking.

Free Press Co-CEO Jessica J. González said: 

“Many of those feting the film industry inside the Dolby Theater on Sunday have already expressed concern about Hollywood’s new billionaire overlords. Allowing mergers of this scale in an already highly concentrated movie business will diminish opportunities for filmmakers, actors, writers and other industry workers as Ellison delivers on promises to make deep job cuts to help pay off the massive debt he’ll incur with this deal. 

“But that’s only half of it. The merger poses an even graver threat to democracy. Ellison and his billionaire-financier daddy are tight with Trump and have promised favorable media coverage in exchange for the president’s blessing of this and future deals. 

“The Ellisons have already shown that they will kneel to Trump in exchange for him looking the other way on massive media mergers like this that appear to violate antitrust laws. In 2025, when Ellison’s Skydance was seeking merger approval for its takeover of Paramount, Paramount paid the president $16 million to settle a frivolous lawsuit against CBS, and then fired late-night host Stephen Colbert when he accurately characterized the payout as a bribe. Last month, the Ellisons reportedly promised the president that they’ll make ‘sweeping changes’ at CNN, a frequent target of Trump’s ire. We know what that means: They’ll fire journalists, kill important stories and replace the news with pro-MAGA propaganda.

“The Ellisons’ takeover casts a shadow on Sunday’s Oscar celebrations. Anyone who’s followed past mergers knows that they result in fewer creative jobs and news sources but also far less diversity and creativity in the stories that Hollywood greenlights. Free Press is urging members of the Academy to join our call to state attorneys general, including California State AG Rob Bonta, to investigate this merger and demand that the film industry stand against the corruption and censorship that have defined Ellison’s tenure at Paramount.”

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