Earlier this week, I hopped on camera with our very own Catherine Rampell largely to discuss the ways the FCC is both being used to ding opponents of Donald Trump (via FCC chief Brendan Carr’s ridiculous decision to demand ABC renew their broadcast licenses early in the face of mean jokes by Jimmy Kimmel) and being asked to aid allies of Donald Trump (by waiving a rule that requires foreign entities to own no more than 25 percent of companies that have broadcast licenses). You’ll want to watch the whole thing:
(Yes, half of the ad-free vid is locked for paying members only. We have to pay the bills somehow! And I ask so very little of y’all. Sign up now!)
One of the things we discussed in that episode is why it seems relatively unlikely that the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) will conduct a review of the $111 billion Paramount–Warner Bros deal even though nearly half of the capital being used to complete it involves funding from Middle Eastern sovereign funds and other foreign sources.
In its 2025 SEC filing, Paramount declared that such a review isn’t necessary for two reasons. The second is that the sovereign wealth funds will have no governance role in the company. That is, despite three such funds ultimately investing 38.5 percent of the equity for the deal, they won’t have any official votes over the business’s direction. (Whether or not we believe they’ll have any unofficial votes over, say, coverage of international news on CNN or CBS is, of course, a separate and, frankly, unanswerable question.) The first: The Chinese company “Tencent will no longer be a financing partner in the transaction.” (Emphasis in the original.)
This is an interesting wrinkle for a couple of reasons. One is that even though Tencent was removed as a potential source of equity to ease the deal, a Chinese conglomerate with ties to the CCP that the Department of Defense has designated as a “Chinese Military Company” was an early investor in Skydance,1 the Ellison-owned company that merged with Paramount last year. Tencent reportedly held about 10 percent of Skydance and roughly five percent of the merged entity. So Tencent will at least be a passive investor in some way in the Skydance/Paramount/Warner Bros.-Discovery entity even if they do nothing else.
Tencent’s role is raising alarms in certain quarters. In a letter requesting a full CFIUS review, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker noted the following:
The fact that Tencent withdrew and has reportedly re-entered at a lower dollar amount does not eliminate the CFIUS question—it underscores it. If anything, the pattern of withdrawal and re-entry—each time at a level designed to stay below the jurisdictional threshold—is itself potential evidence that the transaction’s foreign capital structure is being managed to evade review.
One might argue that, hey, this is about movies—what does it matter if a Chinese company with ties to that nation’s military plays some role? But earlier this spring, there were reports that the White House was considering forcing Tencent to divest from Epic Games out of a concern that the Chinese company would harvest too much personal data from Americans. Similar concerns could well come into play for a streaming giant with 210 million or so global subscribers, which is the combined user base for HBO Max and Paramount Plus. (The number of U.S.-only subscribers is harder to suss out since we don’t have great data on how many people subscribe to the standalone services and HBO via cable companies, nor do we know the overlap of HBO+/Paramount dual subscribers. But the number of households that would be impacted is likely in the mid–eight figures.)
Then again, maybe there’s nothing to worry about! But this is precisely the sort of thing a CFIUS review is designed to sort out. Hopefully they get the chance.
As a semi-regular reminder, Across the Movie Aisle has spun off of The Bulwark and is now available on its own via Apple and other podcast subscribers, as well as Substack. This week, we reviewed Michael. We had some issues with it!
On this week’s Bulwark Goes to Hollywood, I talked to Jeff Annison of Legion M, a production and distribution company that takes its marching orders from its movie fan investors. What does that mean? We discuss!
Assigned Viewing: The Devil Wears Prada (HBO Max/Hulu)
Due to a confluence of events—namely, my wife being out of town all week and a funeral I will be attending when this newsletter hits your inbox—I was, sadly, unable to review The Devil Wears Prada 2. And I mean sadly: I’m a fan of the original! It’s a fascinating film, one that does the most important thing any film about any business can do (teach you something about the universality of that business and also its importance to your own life), and also, weirdly, one that some folks2 have singled out as a sotto voce sports movie.
No, seriously! Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a plucky underdog learning the ropes from the wily veteran Nigel (Stanley Tucci), who takes her under his wing, all while she tries to earn the respect of, and thus triumph over, her nemesis, Miranda (Meryl Streep). She even has an unsupportive jerk of a boyfriend in Adrien Grenier’s Nate, who perfectly mirrors the “Wet Blanket Girlfriend” trope prevalent in many sports films. (For more on this, see Bill Simmons’s column on the topic. Speaking of Simmons, he picked The Devil Wears Prada as his most-rewatchable film of the 2000s. Yet more proof this is basically a sports movie, if we’re being honest.)
Anyway, I hear good things about the new one. I’m excited to see it! But you could do worse than staying in and watching the original this weekend.
One of my favorite stories of the last few years involved Paramount, Skydance, and Tencent: When the trailer for Top Gun: Maverick dropped, eagle-eyed viewers noticed that the Taiwan flag had been erased from Maverick’s jacket. This led to speculation that the film had been censored at the behest of China, since Tencent was an investor in the film. After some good-old-fashioned outrage, the patch was restored, and Tencent backed out of the film.
Okay, fine: mostly guys trying to ward off the dreaded “chick flick” label. As a noted fan of movies about the interior lives of women, however, I do not find this label deterring at all.
Interesting background about Paramount–Warner Bros deal re: Chinese financing & CFIUS review. $111 billion is a lot of scratch. Leverage over a large fraction, even tho non-majority, seems consequential. Regardless what Trump admin decides to do, can we count on the Senate to closely examine the situation? Tom Cotton has a deep interest in ties to the Chinese Communist Party in entertainment & tech, as I recall - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/tom-cotton-backlash-tiktok-ceo-shou-chew-rcna136673 ...but that was under a different prez. The gentleman from Arkansas may be running in a different direction now that the current prez likes both TikTok and selling US chip technology to China
PS - condolences on your loss, Sonny
I too am a big fan of 'The Devil Wears Prada.' I was just eked out on my list of the top five films of the first quarter of this century, but I had Indie Fever and went with Sarah Polley's 'Save this Waltz' instead. If I would have followed the NY Times and chosen 10 films, Prada would be on the list.