Alan Cumming promotes snowballing effort to stop Warner Bros.-Paramount merger

In a video obtained by Deadline this morning, Cumming speaks directly to the camera, urging any of his British fans watching to take action. “If this merger goes through, one company will control a massive slice of what we watch in Britain. Films, the Champions League, much of the Premier League and the FA Cup, the Olympics, CNN, and Channel 5 news,” he says. “Our TV, our film industry, even two of the major news archives we rely on, all answering to a giant conglomerate beholden to Donald Trump, oligarchs, and autocrats. This merger would mean thousands of job cuts, fewer films, and even higher prices. But it isn’t a done deal; U.K. regulators are deciding right now and they have the power to block it. They just need to hear from you. So, please, head to blockthemerger.com/uk and send your comments.”

That website has already been a focal point for those trying to stop the merger, and Cumming is hardly the only famous name to speak out. In April, over 1,000 people in the film industry, including Joaquin Phoenix, Boots Riley, and David Fincher signed an open letter hosted on the same site opposing the merger. Paramount, of course, denies that combining two companies into one will harm competition in the industry.