Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved the company's $111 billion sale to Paramount Skydance on Thursday. By Thursday morning, the open letter at BlockTheMerger.com counted 4,194 signatories, including Robert De Niro, Sofia Coppola, and Holly Hunter, and organizers said the list contains more than 75 Oscar winners and nominees. [1]

The two facts coexist. The shareholder vote moves the deal toward regulatory clearance in the United States and Europe; the petition reframes that clearance as a legitimacy question. The paper's Saturday account of Lionsgate's "Michael" previews and the petition crossing four thousand names treated those as parallel weekend signals. Sunday makes them sequential: the corporate vote happened, the cultural objection did not retreat. [1]

The letter's economic argument is narrow and durable. "Alarmingly, this merger would reduce the number of major U.S. film studios to just four," the BlockTheMerger.com text states. [3] [1] Fortune's roundup framed the petition as "unequivocal opposition" from "more than a thousand members of Hollywood royalty" — the floor, not the ceiling, of the coalition behind state attorneys general now reviewing the transaction. [2]

What changed Sunday is the audience. The signatories are no longer talking to Paramount Skydance; David Ellison's $111 billion price already cleared the holders. They are talking to Rob Bonta, the California attorney general, and to FTC and DOJ reviewers who can attach conditions or sue. The signatures are now legal exhibits. The deal is now an antitrust case in waiting.

-- CAMILLE BEAUMONT, Los Angeles