Paramount completes US$110 billion Warner Bros merger, creating Hollywood giant Skydance

PARAMOUNT Skydance closed its US$110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday, completing one of the biggest media mergers of all time after engaging in a bruising battle for control with Netflix and fending off antitrust lawsuits.

The new company, which will be called Skydance, combines two of the five largest Hollywood film studios, uniting the homes of major franchises such as Harry Potter and Mission Impossible. It will now be home to dozens of TV networks, from CBS to TNT, and two major subscription streaming services, Paramount+ and HBO Max.

David Ellison, who only completed the merger of his Skydance Media film production company with Paramount in August 2025, has continued to consolidate power in the media industry and has become one of Hollywood’s biggest moguls.

Still, he brought in Ynon Kreiz from Mattel to share oversight of Skydance as co-chief executive officer. Kreiz will manage day-to-day operations while Ellison maintains the creative, big-picture vision and handles relationships with talent. 

“Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry,” Ellison said in a statement.

After pulling off two mega-mergers of century-old Hollywood companies in just over a year, Ellison now faces the significant challenge of making it all work. That means eliminating overlapping businesses and jobs without fanning the ire of Hollywood, which is already suffering through a downturn and has opposed the consolidation from the start.

Skydance also will need to manage nearly US$80 billion in debt while adhering to a strict calendar of theatrical releases as stipulated by the lawsuit settlement.

‘Starting off at a great place’

The path to closing the merger was often a rocky one and at times seemed likely to derail. But Ellison was determined to succeed, and saw the deal as essential to be able to compete with the likes of Netflix, Walt Disney, Amazon.com and Apple.

“They’re starting off at a great place,” Michael J Wolf, CEO of Activate Strategy, said in an interview on Bloomberg TV on Monday. “The logic makes sense. Scale puts them in the right position. Now they have to deliver against scale.”

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Paramount agreed to acquire Warner Bros in February following a months-long bidding war against Netflix, which had previously committed to purchasing Warner Bros’ studios and streaming business, but not the cable channels.

Ellison clinched the deal by sweetening the offer price and bringing his father Larry Ellison in to personally guarantee funding. Paramount paid a US$2.8 billion breakup fee to Netflix on behalf of Warner Bros and argued it would be able to clinch a speedy closing of its own deal, promising to pay fees to Warner Bros shareholders of US$7 million a day if the deal wasn’t finalised by Sep 30. 

Though Paramount did manage to get quick antitrust approval from the US Department of Justice, the European Union and other key jurisdictions, it was delayed by a pair of lawsuits brought by 12 states and the Writers Guild of America, who were concerned about the threat of higher prices for consumers and fewer jobs. Thousands of actors, directors, writers and producers signed a letter protesting the deal. 

Much of the fear stems from Paramount’s pledge to extract more than US$6 billion in annual synergies within three years of closing the merger.

Gerry Cardinale, founder and managing partner of RedBird Capital Partners, a Paramount investor, said there are other ways to cut costs and operate more efficiently than simply reducing headcount.

A company wouldn’t spend billions of dollars a year making movies, “and figure your entire premise of your business plan is to fire everybody in Hollywood,” Cardinale said at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles last week. “It’s just the opposite.” 

Skydance’s debt load will continue to weigh on the company, however. Its interest bills are much higher now than if it had issued debt just a few months earlier, since inflation concerns have lifted global borrowing costs.

Paramount sold US$52 billion of loans and bonds in just a week, a tight timeline for any debt deal and particularly so for one of the largest financings in recent history.

Emerging victorious from a legal battle

As part of a negotiated settlement with the states, whose case was led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Paramount vowed to release at least 30 films a year in theatres and keep them there exclusively for 45 days before making them available for viewing at home.

The company also agreed to create an editorial independence board for its news organisations, CBS and CNN, an effort to address concerns that the Ellison family’s friendliness with President Donald Trump would prompt them to try to influence the coverage.

Ellison has so far agreed to keep CBS and CNN separate and under different leadership.

In announcing a new executive team on Monday, he said that CNN CEO Mark Thompson would remain in his role and Bari Weiss would keep her title as editor-in-chief of CBS News.

While acknowledging “trepidations about this moment,” Thompson said in a letter to staff that he has “real confidence” that the new Skydance leadership understands “and will fully support the principle and practice of the kind of independent news that CNN has always stood for.”

Dana Goldberg, a longtime Skydance Media executive who developed and produced films including Top Gun: Maverick and several Mission: Impossible entries, and Josh Greenstein, a previous president of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group where he oversaw films and franchises including Spider-Man, will jointly oversee the new Skydance Motion Picture Group.

James Gunn and Peter Safran, the co-chiefs of DC Studios, the unit at Warner Bros that controls comic-book characters including Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, will continue their roles at Skydance.

Casey Bloys, who has ushered in hits for HBO from the Game of Thrones spinoff House of the Dragon to vacation drama The White Lotus, will be in charge of Skydance’s streaming division, overseeing HBO Max and Paramount+ programming.

George Cheeks, who joined Paramount in 2020, will manage a newly formed TV division, encompassing a mix of Paramount and Warner Bros studios, networks, sports and cable brands. 

JB Perrette, who spearheaded the global rollout of the HBO Max streaming service at Warner Bros, will continue to work closely with Bloys as co-chair and chief business officer of Skydance TV and Skydance streaming.

While Kreiz’s appointment came as a surprise to many on Wall Street, his experience complements Ellison’s, bringing years of oversight of a large public company and more than three decades in entertainment. 

During his tenure at Mattel, Kreiz was instrumental in pushing the toy company to capitalise on its beloved brands, such as Barbie and Hot Wheels, turning them into franchises that could span movies, television and games. 

One executive who won’t be part of the new team at Skydance is David Zaslav, the president and CEO of Warner Bros, who will take his leave along with potentially more than US$667 million in cash severance and stock awards triggered by the sale. BLOOMBERG