Mega-producers Jerry Bruckheimer (F1) and Emma Thomas (Oppenheimer) were grilled at CinemaCon Wednesday over why they haven’t signed an open letter in heavy circulation calling on regulators to block the Paramount-Warner merger.

“First of all, I wasn’t asked,” Bruckheimer said in conversation with Puck’s Matt Belloni. “Look, I think the train has left the station. I think this is well on its way. You can sign all the petitions you want, but [the merger is] already being approved by European countries. It’s happening. So, there’s not much we can do about it other than take [Paramount’s] David [Ellison] at his word that he’s going to make 30 movies [a year], and that would be fantastic.”

Bruckheimer continued, “I know David. I know he loves movies. That’s why he got in this business…He’s very passionate about getting movies made, and he tries to make a lot of them. So why would he change from being an independent producer to putting two studios together and not make enough movies?”

When Belloni noted the possibility that Democratic lawmakers might be able to at least delay the merger, which has been discussed as potentially destructive to the entertainment business, Bruckheimer opined, “That would hurt the business if they delayed it. That would really hurt us because we want them making movies. We want them really to stretch out and make as many movies as possible.”

Thomas added “I don’t know that petitions are the right way to effect change, is my sort of honest opinion. I do think that people are right to be skeptical about this merger. We’ve seen in the past that it doesn’t always lead to what the people involved promised.”

Bruckheimer and Thomas’s comments came at a time when over 3,000 prominent industry figures have come around to signing the open letter. They were made during the CinemaCon panel on the Cinema United Filmmaker Leadership Council — a new filmmaking body advocating for and supporting the theatrical moviegoing experience, with which both producers are involved. Michael O’Leary, President and CEO of Cinema United, also spoke.

Of course, even with what Bruckheimer and Thomas said about the open letter, much of the 45-minute conversation oriented around how the business has changed for the worse — with the advent of streaming, mass consolidation, unexpected factors like the pandemic and double strike, and more — and possible solutions to the challenges the industry faces.

Asked about his worst fears for the business, Bruckheimer said, “That we lose more studios. You know, consolidation hurts. If [Warner Bros. and Paramount] make the 30 movies, that’s great. But look, if we lost one studio, we picked up Amazon. So there’s always somebody else that comes in, like A24… If there’s people that want to go see movies and want to go to theaters, an exhibitor would pop up to fill that void…If we get back to the habit of, there’s an interesting movie you want to see every single weekend.”

Thomas said her greatest fear is “disruption for disruption’s sake,” admitting, “when I look at what’s happened over the last few years, I have not seen a great deal of logic in the decisions that have been made.”

She asked, “Where are we now? Our business is kind of a mess, in a way that it hasn’t been, and I think that’s because the profit motive and the investment in the theatrical business has sort of exited the picture. Look, there’s so many things wrong with the corporate world at the moment, in terms of the decisions that are being made that benefit a small number of people and nobody else…”

Belloni joked that she could just come out and acknowledge she was speaking out about Warner’s David Zaslav and his massive M&A-influenced pay package, which is a big subject of conversation these days.

Thomas said, “I’m trying to be diplomatic.”

She added, “I just think that we’ve got to get back to taking the longer-term view, investing in the infrastructure of our business and being realistic about the ways that, yeah, it’s a risky business. Sometimes movies work, sometimes they don’t. But the only way we’re actually going to continue to be able to make movies that have the best chances that they can have is to keep that pipeline going, to keep putting movies in theaters, and to be rigorous about making sure that we are giving them the best chance that they can [have].”