Paramount to boost film releases with ‘Top Gun 3’ a priority
Reviving the film studio, which has not turned an annual profit since 2022, is a priority, Ellison says
[LOS ANGELES] David Ellison, chief executive officer of Paramount Skydance, said that he plans to boost film and TV production at the media company he acquired control of last week.
Introducing his new management team to journalists in Los Angeles on Wednesday (Aug 13), Ellison said that he will create more content for the company’s Paramount+ streaming service and produce as many as 20 movies a year. Priorities will be a third film in the Top Gun series as well as more from Star Trek.
Ellison will not renew a multiyear live-action film deal with Apple announced in 2022, so that the combined Paramount Skydance can focus on its own titles.
He has appointed Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein to run the fabled movie studio. Goldberg is Skydance’s former chief creative officer, where she produced titles including the latest instalments of the Mission: Impossible franchise, while Greenstein is the former president of Sony’s motion picture group.
Goldberg and Greenstein plan to focus on a mix of original films, such as a recently acquired biker heist project starring Timothee Chalamet, and franchise features.
Reviving the film studio, which has not turned an annual profit since 2022, is a priority, Ellison said. He plans to boost production, increase revenue from online sales and rentals, and count on Greenstein’s experience helping improve earnings at Sony.
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Shares of the company, which owns CBS and MTV, along with its namesake movie and TV studios, jumped 37 per cent on Wednesday, just a week after Ellison and his new group settled in as controlling shareholders. They were buoyed in part by an X post from CNBC personality Jim Cramer, who labelled the company a meme stock.
Ellison has already begun putting his mark on Paramount. On Aug 11, the company announced it acquired exclusive rights to show all events from the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in the US over the next seven years in a US$7.7 billion deal.
In addition to Ellison, Paramount is led by former NBCUniversal executive Jeff Shell, who will serve as president, TV chair George Cheeks and Cindy Holland, a former Netflix executive who will lead the company’s streaming businesses.
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The company has no immediate plans to raise the US$8-a-month tab for Paramount+, despite the recent UFC deal, Shell said, adding the service “is probably underpriced”. Increasing Paramount+ subscribers through a joint venture with the likes of Comcast’s Peacock streaming service remained a possibility, he said.
The BET unit, which had been earmarked for sale by previous management, and Nickelodeon will be important drivers of Paramount’s streaming strategy, Shell said.
The Ellison-led group will sell the National Amusements movie theatres acquired as part of the deal. Ellison and Redbird Capital Partners have hired investment banks to handle the divestment, which will likely be done in pieces.
Ellison, a 42-year-old independent film and TV producer, is the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison. He promised to bring fresh capital and new ideas to an old-line Hollywood company struggling under the weight of debt and a shrinking audience for its conventional TV programming and theatrical films. BLOOMBERG
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