larry ellison

Fox Corp.’s $22-billion acquisition of San José-based Roku, operator of streaming services and seller of hardware devices, seemed like a straightforward deal when it was announced in June: A growing media company was looking to bolster its presence in the fast-growing streaming industry.

But, on Wednesday, the Trump administration weighed in.

Fox Corp. and Roku said that the companies received requests from the Justice Department on Tuesday for additional information in connection with its review of the merger.

While Fox and Roku downplayed the requests, saying that they had expected the outreach, the timing of the move raised eyebrows among some analysts, who said it could signal further scrutiny of the transaction by the Justice Department.

“The president has been outspoken on the fact that he will take retaliatory action against networks that say things that he doesn’t agree with, or they do things that he doesn’t agree with,” said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at advisory services firm Enderle Group.

The action follows President Trump’s surprise over Fox’s ouster of anchor Maria Bartiromo. She was pushed out after she had shared internal company texts with the White House, which sources told The Times may have been the breaking point.

Trump said on social media that he couldn’t believe that Bartiromo will no longer have her shows on Fox. “Her fans, of which there are many, will not be happy,” he wrote on Truth Social on Sept. 3.

Associate Atty. Gen. Stanley Woodward said the Justice Department could not comment on pending matters but said in a statement: “We can affirm that this DOJ under President Trump’s leadership will continue to prioritize affordability for all Americans across our economy.”

Fox announced in June its plans to acquire Roku for $22 billion, which would give the company access to Roku’s 100 million households that use its platform to connect to different streaming services. The deal would benefit Fox’s advertising business, as well as make it less reliant on traditional pay TV platforms.

Fox and Roku said they expect the merger to be done by the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory and shareholder approval, according to a Sept 9 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

“FOX and Roku will continue to work cooperatively with the DOJ in its review of the Mergers,” Fox said in its filing.

Some legal experts said it is fairly standard for the Justice Department to make an additional request for information.

“It doesn’t mean that their review is going to be more extensive than usual,” said Ray Seilie, an entertainment attorney at law firm Kinsella Holley Iser Kump Steinsapir.

For example, the Justice Department made a second request for information when it reviewed Paramount Skydance’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, he said. The merging companies typically send information that helps the government figure out what the market impact will be of a merger, he added.

The Justice Department ultimately approved Paramount’s planned acquisition, despite opposition from some industry stakeholders. State attorneys general and the Writers Guild of America have sued Paramount over the deal, raising antitrust concerns. Others have pointed out close ties between Trump and Larry Ellison, a financial backer of the deal, who has also donated money to a group that supports Trump. Ellison’s son, David, is chief executive of Paramount Skydance.

Legal experts and analysts said they don’t think the combination of Fox and Roku raises antitrust issues because they are not dominant players in streaming and have businesses that complement each other.

But one wild card is Trump.

“You never know what Trump is going to seize on and decide he wants to do,” said Bryan Sullivan, a partner with law firm Early Sullivan Wright Gizer & McRae on whether Trump will take retaliatory action through the Justice Department in the Fox-Roku deal. “It’s chaos in the federal government and it could very well happen because of that reason, but it could also just be a blip and not a big deal.”

Times staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.

Dozens of Jewish artists are defending Mark Ruffalo after Paramount Skydance branded the actor’s criticisms about software company Oracle Corp. as “antisemitic tropes.”

Support for the actor comes as Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison has struggled to get its $111-billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger over the finish line amid considerable opposition.

Ruffalo has long been an irritant to Paramount as he is a leading figure in a high-profile Hollywood campaign to block the merger. In an Instagram post late last month, Ruffalo blasted Larry Ellison’s Texas-based software company Oracle for assisting with technology to help Israeli military efforts, including in Gaza — a conflict that Ruffalo and other progressive activists have opposed because of the killing of Palestinians.

In an open letter, signed by more than 150 filmmakers, academics, writers and even a few rabbis, the group denounced “the outrageous smear campaign against our respected colleague Mark Ruffalo.”

“Enough with the false and dangerous weaponization of charges of antisemitism against those who are brave enough to point out the obvious: that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact,” the group wrote.

Tuesday’s letter was signed by several high-profile filmmakers, including Joel Coen, Hannah Einbinder, Tony Kushner, Lisa Cholodenko, Ilana Glazer, Frances Fisher, Todd Haynes and Sarah Kunstler.

The group tied David Ellison’s merger ambitions to his billionaire father’s expansive network of businesses, which now include TikTok. Larry Ellison is personally guaranteeing the equity needed for Paramount to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, and the family will become controlling owners of the merged entity.

However, the Hollywood merger is stalled because of an antitrust lawsuit brought by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and 11 other Democratic state attorneys general, including from New York, New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada and Oregon. Paramount agreed to pause the transaction until the court case can be decided.

A trial is set for March 2 in Oakland, but Paramount has been agitating for industry leaders and politicians to pressure Bonta to force a settlement that would allow the deal to go through.

“The proposed merger of Paramount and Warner Brothers Discovery is no mere combination of two huge multinational companies,” the group wrote in the letter. “Yes, it will destroy thousands upon thousands of livelihoods. Yes, it will further consolidate the oligarchic control of our media (witness the gutting of CBS News). Yes, it will strangle competition and creativity in film and television production and distribution.”

The group painted the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger as “part of a larger project of tech-driven domination, a project Larry Ellison and his partners have never been shy about trumpeting — and one they themselves have explicitly linked to their support for the ongoing depredations being visited on the people of Palestine and their silencing of critics of those horrors,” the group wrote.

Paramount declined to comment.

The merger fight has grown increasingly ugly in recent weeks after Paramount threatened to leave California if Bonta continued his court fight to unravel the deal. Paramount suggested it would pull up stakes from its Melrose Avenue film studio as soon as this fall.

Then, on Aug. 21, the company accused Ruffalo of injecting “antisemitic tropes” into the opposition campaign to thwart the industry-reshaping merger that would bring HBO, CBS News, CNN, TBS and the Warner Bros. and Paramount film and TV studios under the same roof.

Leaders of prominent Jewish organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti-Defamation League, came to Paramount’s defense, blasting the Emmy-winning actor known for playing the Hulk and roles in productions for HBO.

Ruffalo defended himself, saying he was not being antisemitic. He said he was speaking out against Oracle’s use of technology to assist Israel’s military in the war in Gaza, “what we now have come to see as a genocide, which was built on an apartheid system of oppression powered by Oracle,” Ruffalo wrote in his post.

Paramount leaders have branded some of the opposition to the deal as “antisemitic.”

“Pointing out the crucial connections between what is happening in Gaza and what is happening in Hollywood is the exact opposite of antisemitism,” the group wrote in the open letter. “It is, for us, the very essence of Jewish ethical duty.”

The letter cited recent polls that reflect a majority of “American Jews now agree that Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza; and four in ten even agree that these crimes amount to genocide,” the group wrote. “Do those attacking Mark Ruffalo as an antisemite seriously believe that all these American Jews are antisemites too?”

Bonta abruptly canceled settlement talks last week, but extended an olive branch to Paramount by saying he would be willing to meet with the company to discuss ways to address his antitrust concerns.