Tennessee Pursues Paramount As Studio Mulls California Exit

The Volunteer State is throwing its hat into the ring as a potential new home for Paramount as a legal battle rages over the company's $111B takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. 

Tennessee Deputy Gov. Stuart McWhorter sent a letter to Paramount CEO David Ellison earlier this month, positioning the state as an attractive location for the company's relocated headquarters and citing its favorable business climate, The Hollywood Reporter first reported.

Ellison has reportedly considered moving the corporate headquarters outside California and reallocating a majority of the $30B in planned spending after the state's attorney general, Rob Bonta, and 11 other attorneys general filed a lawsuit to block its merger on antitrust grounds. 

In the letter, McWhorter courted Ellison by centering his Tennessee pitch on fiscal discipline, low taxes, predictable governance and a belief that government "should be a partner in private-sector growth."

"As Paramount Skydance writes its next chapter, Tennessee offers a compelling proposition: a state where creativity and technology converge, where talent is developed intentionally, and where innovation is embraced," he wrote.

An adviser to Ellison told The Hollywood Reporter “everything is on the table,” while Semafor reported earlier this week that people close to the CEO have pushed him to consider moving outside California.

A departure from California would come quickly after Paramount relocated from New York to the West Coast last year. Paramount would join other major companies that have fled California in the last couple of years, like Chevron, Oracle and Tesla.

If the merger were to close, Warner Bros. would return to Tennessee with a headquarters relocation to the state. The company formerly held an office complex in Knoxville before selling it in 2023. 

Warner Bros.' 97M SF of global real estate is also up in the air with the merger uncertainty. The company owns a 2.6M SF film and television complex in Burbank, California, as well as a 1.3M SF complex northwest of London. It also has an almost 3M SF footprint in Los Angeles between its industrial, office and studio properties. 

"As you look ahead, I encourage you to consider Tennessee as the home for that future," McWhorter wrote.