- Paramount has reportedly zeroed in on Bluebonnet Business Center, a vacant 415,000-square-foot East Austin building, as a possible studio headquarters site.
- CEO David Ellison has threatened to move Paramount out of California amid state attorneys general efforts to block its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
- Family ties add a wrinkle: Ellison’s father, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, moved that company from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020 before relocating again to Nashville.
Austin could soon land a major film studio tenant as Paramount Skydance weighs an Austin headquarters for the entertainment giant emerging from its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, according to The Real Deal. The company has reportedly zeroed in on an East Austin property called Bluebonnet Business Center, though the move hinges on the outcome of an ongoing legal fight over the merger itself.
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A Merger Under Fire
A dozen state attorneys general, led by California’s Rob Bonta, are working to block the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery deal despite prior approval from both companies’ shareholders and the Department of Justice. Bonta has argued the merger would hurt competition in film and TV, leading to fewer jobs, fewer movies and higher prices.
In response, Paramount CEO David Ellison — who took the top job after Skydance Media’s $8 billion merger with the 114-year-old studio last year — has threatened to move the combined company out of California entirely. Texas, Tennessee and Georgia are all reportedly in the mix as landing spots, giving Ellison leverage as the legal fight over the merger continues to play out.
The Details
The Austin site under consideration, at 9219 Old Manor Road, is a vacant 415,000-square-foot building developed by Houston-based Hines, with 67 parking spots large enough for production trailers. Aquila Commercial is handling leasing. Neither Hines, Aquila nor Paramount responded to The Real Deal’s request for comment.
The building is one of only 15 structures over 400,000 square feet in the Austin metro, according to CoStar Group senior market analyst Israel Linares, and just two of those are currently available to lease. It also sits five miles from Troublemaker Studios, the production company founded by Texas filmmaker Robert Rodriguez.
Zooming Out
Paramount’s flirtation with Texas follows a well-worn path for companies frustrated with California’s regulatory climate, and it echoes the broader antitrust saga still playing out around the Paramount-Warner Bros. merger itself.
David Ellison’s father, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, moved that company’s headquarters from Silicon Valley to Austin in 2020, only to announce a further relocation to Nashville in 2024 — a deal that earned Oracle $65 million in Tennessee state incentives. Oracle’s 50-acre Austin campus along Lady Bird Lake remains, while its planned Nashville site spans nearly 80 acres.
Why It Matters
Large corporate headquarters searches like this one are rarely decided on real estate terms alone. Daniel Oney, director of research at the Texas Real Estate Research Center at Texas A&M University, who managed more than 70 corporate site selections before moving into research, said personal and family considerations can shape outcomes as much as tax incentives or workforce access. That dynamic has already reshaped office demand patterns in markets absorbing corporate relocations.
“They’re business people, and they’re looking at the bottom line and they’ve got shareholders if it’s a public company, but they’re still people, and they make decisions for emotional reasons sometimes,” Oney said. A Paramount move could also seed a wider entertainment-industry ecosystem in Austin, from boutique production vendors to community college training programs, Oney added.
What’s Next
The legal fight over the Warner Bros. Discovery merger remains the key variable determining whether Paramount ultimately needs a new headquarters at all. If the deal clears its remaining challenges and Ellison follows through on relocating, expect a formal announcement on Bluebonnet Business Center or a competing Tennessee or Georgia site within the coming months.
For Austin’s office and industrial landlords, the scarcity of large-block buildings like the one on Old Manor Road is the more immediate takeaway: with only two 400,000-square-foot-plus buildings currently available in the entire metro, a single tenant decision from a company the size of Paramount could quickly tighten an already thin slice of the market.
