- Paramount is searching for roughly 400,000 SF of office space in Nashville, with the city currently lacking a vacancy large enough and a built-to-suit option under consideration.
- CEO David Ellison is also eyeing Austin’s Bluebonnet Business Center, mirroring a relocation path his father Larry Ellison already carved for Oracle from California to Texas and Tennessee.
- The relocation talk coincides with Paramount’s $111B merger pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery and a lawsuit from 12 states, including California, over the deal.
Paramount is exploring a move to Nashville office space as CEO David Ellison considers relocating the studio out of Hollywood, Politico reported.
An anonymous source said the company is searching for roughly 400,000 SF it could occupy within two to three years, though Nashville’s office market doesn’t currently have a vacancy that fits the bill.
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Following the Family Playbook
Nashville isn’t the only option on the table. Ellison is also reportedly eyeing Austin, where the company appears to have zeroed in on the Bluebonnet Business Center, one of just two vacant spaces in the city topping 400,000 SF, according to the New York Post.
The dual search echoes moves by Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who relocated the software giant’s headquarters from California to Austin in 2020. Four years later, he announced long-term plans to build a new Oracle campus in Nashville, expected to open in 2031, while Austin remains the company’s operational home.
The Details
Nashville’s office market currently lacks a vacancy large enough for Paramount’s needs, the source said, though the studio is also weighing a built-to-suit development. Austin, by contrast, already has available large-block space and deeper film infrastructure, including Austin Studios and Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios.
That production infrastructure gap matters: Nashville’s pitch leans on its music-industry base and heritage rather than a built-out film ecosystem, a tradeoff Paramount will have to weigh against Austin’s readier production footprint.
The real estate search comes as Paramount pursues a hotly contested $111B merger with Warner Bros. Discovery. Twelve states, including California, have sued to block the deal, and some observers see the Hollywood exit threat as leverage in that fight rather than a firm relocation plan.
That skepticism is fueled partly by the fact that California, the state Paramount would be leaving, is itself one of the 12 plaintiffs. Critics argue the public office search doubles as pressure on regulators as much as it reflects a settled decision to relocate.
Zooming Out
The Nashville interest builds on reporting that first surfaced Paramount’s Austin ambitions. Paramount’s Austin search centers on the Bluebonnet Business Center, giving the studio two Texas- and Tennessee-based options to weigh against staying in Southern California.
Unlike Austin’s production infrastructure, Nashville’s pitch leans on its music-industry base and the Ellison family’s existing relationship with the market through Oracle’s planned 2031 campus, a connection that could smooth site selection and incentive talks if Paramount moves forward.
Why It Matters
A Paramount relocation, even a partial one, would be a significant corporate win for whichever market lands it, adding hundreds of thousands of square feet of office demand at a time when large-block leasing remains scarce nationally.
The parallel searches are themselves a signal: companies rarely run site selection processes in two states purely as a bluff, particularly for a footprint as large as 400,000 SF, suggesting the relocation planning is more advanced than the merger politics alone would imply.
Nashville’s office market has had a mixed 2026. Starbucks’ planned expansion in Nashville hit a wall earlier this year, underscoring how selective large corporate users have become even in growth markets, and how much scrutiny a deal of Paramount’s scale would draw.
What’s Next
Paramount hasn’t committed to either city, and the outcome may hinge as much on the Warner Bros. Discovery litigation as on real estate fundamentals.
If the studio does proceed, expect a formal site search and incentive negotiations in both Austin and Nashville within the next few months, with the built-to-suit option in Nashville likely to take longer to deliver than an existing large block in Austin.
Should Paramount lose the merger fight in court, a relocation decision could accelerate quickly, giving Austin’s readier inventory and production infrastructure an edge over Nashville’s longer build-to-suit timeline.
