Could Kara Swisher’s exit from CNN be a about a little more than politics?
The famed tech reporter announced on her podcast Tuesday that — after news that David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance is expected to absorb CNN — she’s exiting the network as soon as possible.
“‘F–k these guys,’” she said on “The Pivot,” “I don’t want to work for them.”
But the chatter around the deal is that her ex, Nellie Bowles, may play a part in her rush for the door.
Bowles is now married to Bari Weiss, Ellison’s golden child, who he installed at the helm of CBS News when he bought it in 2025, and is widely rumored to be eyeing to run editorial at CNN too.
Insiders note that Swisher may not be entirely thrilled by the prospect of working for her beloved ex girlfriend’s new wife. In fact, some say she’s still pining for the charming Bowles and is not yet over the sting of losing out to Weiss.
“Kara’s just jealous,” sniped one source.
After we emailed Swisher for comment, she posted the email on Threads, and said: “‘Here’s my comment: “As exciting as girl on girl action is for you to gin up, I have been saying for a long time now that I would depart CNN if the deal goes through, due to my lack of confidence in the owners as decent media stewards & not whatever minion they decide to install… Please try to keep up as hard as that is for you.”
Bowles — who co-founded the Free Press with Weiss — worked on Swisher’s “Recode” podcast in the mid-2010s, and the pair dated for several years.
The satirist started dating Weiss in 2018, and they married in a couple of years later. They now have two kids.
Swisher, meanwhile, separated from politico Megan Smith in 2014. She’s now married to Amanda Katz, and they also have two kids.
The podcaster’s CNN contract runs through Dec. 31., and she said Tuesday that she has asked her agent to get her out of her deal early.
We hope the agent gets her sprung before December, or the CNN holiday party could be quite awkward.

“The View” host Sunny Hostin revealed that she was the holdout juror in the high-profile “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” trial in 1991.
Hostin spoke of her time serving on that jury during a discussion on the Lindsay Clancy case, which ended earlier this month in a mistrial with the jury split 11-1.
“The reason I felt that I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case, in the Daniel Rakowitz case,” Hostin said on Tuesday’s episode, to the shock of her fellow cast mates.
Rakowitz was accused of killing and dismembering Monika Beerle, a 26-year-old dance student, then boiling her body parts and feeding them in a soup to people in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village of Manhattan in 1989.
He was found not guilty by reason of insanity at his 1991 trial, which dominated headlines.
Hostin said she served on the jury before she went to law school.
“When I brought it up at the Hot Topics meeting, I don’t think everyone believed me. And then my producer looked it up, and I’m in the New York Times,” she said.
The show then aired a picture of a newspaper clipping from an old New York Times article that read: “Several jurors questioned afterward said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.”
“That was me,” Hostin said. “It was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic. He was in psychosis. He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her, he panicked. He chopped up her body parts. Yes, boiled her body parts. Tried to commit the perfect crime … and he fed her body parts to the unhoused.”
The jury deliberated for an intense nine days, and their talks were at times combative, Hostin recalled.
“One juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me. But one by one I picked them off and said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ And we ended up all 12 unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity,” she said.
Rakowitz was ordered in 2010 to remain at maximum security Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island.
Hostin noted Rakowitz remains in a mental institution, which she called “a different type of prison.”
Her cast mates were stunned by Hostin’s revelation, some appearing to disagree with her position in the jury.
Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “And you got this guy off?” as Hostin described the grisly crime. Star Jones, who was seated next to Hostin, joked, “Excuse me, can I move over?”
Speaking on the Clancy case, Hostin called Massachusetts’ insanity defense “well-established” and said she agreed Clancy was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
Clancy’s defense argued she was not criminally responsible for killing her three children because she was suffering from postpartum psychosis.

A Zoom call on Wednesday with 500 senior Warner Bros staffers to discuss Paramount‘s settlement of the antitrust lawsuit brought by state attorneys general related to its merger with WBD did little to dissipate the gloomy, Mordor-like clouds over the Burbank lot, to use a Lord of the Rings reference.
The video call, which has been routine since Paramount won the $110 billion bid for Warner Bros Discovery, was led by WBD Studios Chief Operating Officer Simon Robinson, who is running point on the merger integration; Chief Legal Officer Priya Aiyar; WBD Chief Comms Officer Robert Gibbs; and HR boss Amy Girdwood. According to sources, the four conceded they didn’t have much visibility into Paramount’s plans for a newly combined company, but indicated that the anticipation is for the deal to close in about 10 days, in line with Paramount CEO David Ellison‘s two-week timeframe he provided Monday.
The name and the leadership structure of the new company will likely be announced ahead of close, the executives reportedly said, though they weren’t clear as to when exactly that might be. We heard that Girdwood told leaders to take a moment to reflect on the great work accomplished during their tenures.
“It feels like a scramble,” one source said.
To say staffers were surprised by the AG settlement Monday doesn’t really cover it.
“It was a big shock,” one person said. “If you were riding the roller coaster, you felt like things were not progressing.”
Still, even if the settlement and its timing came as a surprise, the ultimate result seemed inevitable as WBD CEO David Zaslav has been hellbent on selling the studio. Ellison’s takeover of the cinematic institution founded by Albert, Harry, Sam and Jack Warner “was always bound to happen,” one insider exclaimed.
Zaslav, who is likely to walk away with more than $600 million from the $110B merger, was not on today’s Zoom, we’re told.
The Ellison-run Paramount has said that the Warner Bros acquisition will yield $6B in synergy savings, which don’t necessarily translate into job cuts, but rather by reducing inefficiencies in other structural areas (i.e., real estate portfolios, data servers).
But Warner Bros staffers aren’t buying that.
“We’ve been here before. We know what it looks like,” said one insider about the changeover in ownership of Warner Bros over the past decade. It was only four years ago that AT&T dumped WarnerMedia into the hands of Discovery.
Myriad people inside Warner Bros are cynical about the capping of severances and the fact that only a few at the top are bound for a post-merger windfall. There’s also ire over the pausing of contract renewals due to the acquisition, as well as irritable infighting between departments about theatrical failures this year: No one WB title has cleared $100M at the domestic box office, with the highest-grossing movie stateside being Wuthering Heights at $84M. Home entertainment and data analytics divisions were none too happy about DC’s Supergirl tanking; with its $186M net production cost and a global box office gross of $126.3M, key staffers believe DC Studios chose the wrong comic book character to adapt.
On the immediate horizon as the Paramount-Warner Bros marriage comes together is Digger, the $125M political satire starring Tom Cruise, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu and produced by Legendary. It opens on October 2. While domestic debut prospects are at around $20M, Warners is hoping to get past any sour headlines about box office-to-cost ratios on the film, much like it did on One Battle After Another, as the four-time Oscar-winning filmmaker’s Doctor Strangelove-like epic is being primed as an awards-season contender. It is a chip Paramount really doesn’t have on its year-end schedule.
The new Paramount could also inherit another awards contender and its first billion-dollar-grossing title since Skydance took over the Melrose Ave lot with Legendary/Warner Bros’ Dune: Part Three. That opens on December 18.
At Paramount, the latter epic would fall into the arms of global marketing and distribution guru (and former WB senior ranking theatrical suit) Josh Goldstine, who led the Dune franchise across two movies to a $1.12B global gross and eight Oscars.
We’ve heard on the Paramount side that it’s still TBD in regards to how the merger will handle duplications in marketing and distribution.
“There could be more fear on the Paramount side,” says one source in the know when it comes to marketing. How’s that? Goldstine will be back together with the team he built at Warners, meaning Dana Nussbaum and Christian Davin in global marketing along with Creative Advertising EVP John Stanford.
There’s also a thick fog around those staffers who were bound to decamp from Warner Bros proper in the previously planned Gunnar Wiedenfels-led Global Networks spinoff.
Yes, Warner Bros staffers are already putting themselves out there for other jobs. Some of them have already found new gigs: Former EVP Comms Katie Martin Kelly, prized by Warner Bros Motion Picture group co-heads Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy, high-tailed it for Netflix as her contract ended, rather than wait for the Russian roulette the new conglomerate could bring. Former HBO Max EVP Originals Marketing Pia Barlow found a new job at Amazon MGM Studios as their Series Marketing VP, a gig that triggered WBD to sue for poaching.
The merger closing will likely trigger more voluntary departures as many WBD executives had been waiting to cash out stock options post-transaction, no longer bound by contracts that typically provide a way out in case of change of ownership.
“Since David Zaslav took control of Warner Bros, there’s just been thousands of jobs lost,” one former Turner publicist emphatically told us. “Those are jobs that the entertainment industry is never going to get back.”
And therein lies the ultimate piercing wound for any Warners or Paramount employee in the danger zone: The fact that there are not a lot of jobs out there is a big deal.
What’s more, adds a source, “People are very concerned about the survival of the Warner Bros brand.”
Counters a senior ranking insider at the conglomerate: “There’s a feeling of relief from senior executives to junior staff about the possibilities that the new company can bring. They were very excited by David Ellison’s note.”
For now, Paramount is inheriting at least 39 Warner Bros theatrical releases on the calendar dated between October 2 this year and the end of 2028. That output reps 56% of what will be a currently combined 70 features between the two studios. During the agita of Netflix and Paramount courting Warner Bros, the studio’s greenlighting of productions has been at a loud hum; assumptions were made by some that Warner Bros Motion Pictures would be in purgatory during merger talk time, and that filmmakers and reps would be wary of taking projects to them. That’s not really an option for content creators at a time when it’s a miracle for any major motion picture to get off the ground.
Something to look forward to: While a Barbie sequel hasn’t been greenlit due to ongoing talks with top-tier talent including director Greta Gerwig and stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, expect that to be one of the first orders of business for the new Ellison-owned Paramount-Warner Bros.
Beams one optimistic Warner exec, “The new merger gives us the all the financial resources to compete on a level with the big streamers.”

Warner Bros has made some release date changes, unrelated to its pending marriage with Paramount.
DC’s Robins-origin puppets-meet-animation feature Dynamic Duo is moving from June 30, 2028, to Septemer 22, 2028. The reasoning is that Warner Bros distribution believes this will be a good back-to-school animated feature slot for not just K-12 but also teens and college kids. The movie has the potential to hit the Spider-Verse crowd.
Coincidentally, this shifts Dynamic Duo away from Paramount’s big feature take on the video game Call of Duty on June 30. There are no Paramount movies on September 22, 2028.
Also shifting forward, is the untitled Chris Columbus-directed Gremlins movie, which is moving from November 19, 2027, to Oct. 6, 2028 (Warners had good luck in that first weekend of October with Joker). The Gremlins pic wasn’t up against any Paramount movies on its 2027 date, nor is it on its new weekend.
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Dynamic Duo marks the first joint project between DC Studios and the Bill Damaschke-led WBPA.
The 6th & Idaho movie scripted by Matthew Aldrich is being made by a new animation studio out of New Orleans named Swaybox and that studio’s husband-and-wife creators Arthur Mintz and Theresa Andersson. Mintz will direct this movie, which follows the early days of Dick Grayson and Jason Todd aka the Robins.
InSneider recently announced the voice cast for Dynamic Duo: Mason Thames as Dick Grayson, Logan Kim as Jason Todd, Lee Pace as Red Hood One and Steve Buscemi as Red Hood Two.
RELATED: Post-Merger Paramount May Overdeliver On Settlement Terms With 36-Film 2027 Slate Amid Speculation About Duplication & WB Leadership
The third Gremlins feature has a current draft from Hannah Marks off a screenplay by Columbus, Zach Lipovsky and Adam B. Stein. Kristie Macosko Krieger and Holly Bario are producing for Amblin Entertainment alongside 26th Street Pictures’ Columbus, Michael Barnathan and Mark Radcliffe. Steven Spielberg is executive producing alongside Maiden Voyage’s Eleanor Columbus. Joe Dante directed the first two Gremlins movies.
Here’s what the Gremlins did on social:

A Tennessee judge granted Dolly Parton’s estate a temporary restraining order Wednesday against the late singer’s nephew Bryan Seaver and his private security company.
She’s Alive, the entity founded to manage Parton’s estate, had filed the complaint against Seaver and Squadron Augmented Protection Services a day prior. The estate accused Seaver, who was Parton’s head of security, of threatening to commit violence and destroy his aunt’s legacy and business empire in court filings.
As part of the order, Seaver and SAPS must refrain from talking with or being within 1,000 feet of She’s Alive employees, attorneys and business partners. The order is also meant to keep him from interfering with its business relationships.
A hearing is scheduled for Oct. 7.
Seaver, who owns a company that provided Parton’s security detail and was handpicked by the star to announce her death from cancer last month, did not respond to an email from The Associated Press requesting comment Tuesday. No one came to the door Wednesday at an address listed in court documents for Seaver in the semi-rural Nashville suburb of Fairview. A woman speaking to a reporter through a doorbell camera said that they would not be speaking to anyone.
In the temporary restraining order request filed by She’s Alive, the entity that manages and protects Parton’s professional property and business, and other court documents, Seaver is accused of sending increasingly threatening messages over the last several weeks. She’s Alive is run by Danny Nozell, Parton’s longtime manager.
Last week, She’s Alive terminated Seaver and SAPS, saying his “terrorizing conduct made their continued retention untenable,” according to court documents. The company is also named in the complaint; its representatives did not respond to an emailed request for comment Tuesday.
The request alleges that Seaver and his company used “terroristic threats, harassment, and intimidation” against She’s Alive.
“Those means are especially improper because they have been deployed as part of a calculated campaign by a trained military/private-security operative with access to an arsenal of military-grade weaponry, rather than through any legitimate commercial or legal process,” the court documents read.
It accuses him of being “emboldened” and “relentless” in his threats against She’s Alive since Parton’s death.
“He has individually, and through his associates, made repeated written threats to Ms. Parton’s staff, legal and business advisers, and others,” it reads. “These were not ordinary workplace disputes or heated words; they were deliberate threats from a self-proclaimed heavily armed, former security operative with a military-contractor background.”
The court documents showcase a series of text messages and emails She’s Alive says were sent by Seaver, starting just before Parton’s death. The messages begin with threats to destroy Parton’s brand, and then after her death, depict Seaver reveling in his newfound fame and calling himself an “international arms dealer and mercenary.”
In one message written on Sept. 1 and included in the court documents, he said: “I’m going to set up a podcast dedicated to ruining Dolly’s brand partnerships and telling the violations these people have done on us. It’s going to be great. Or f—— pay me.”
Seaver also claimed that he worked for private military contractors overseas during the Iraq War and used that experience as part of these threats, according to the complaint.
In another text message, he alleges that he “just sold 29 million dollars worth of ammo to Haiti.”
The messages have resulted in Parton’s trusts and estates attorney leaving and employees of She’s Alive resigning, according to the court documents. The entity has also had to hire private security for its employees, including at their homes, according to the documents.
“I mean, they literally call him a terrorist in this complaint,” CBS News legal analyst Caroline Polisi said. “The text messages that they’ve provided do paint a picture, a very scary picture, of really an unhinged person. However, I will say that it’s light on the technical legal details.”
In a prerecorded video announcing Parton’s death last month, Seaver said that his video was “something Dolly asked of me years ago, before I fully absorbed it as a future reality.”
He described it as “an honor that is mixed with absolute pride and great sadness. But sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus.”