Paramount Skydance completed a $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery, one of the largest media mergers ever. The new company will go by Skydance, uniting two of the five biggest film studios and putting blockbuster franchises like Harry Potter and Mission Impossible under the same roof. On the TV side, the lineup stretches from CBS to TNT, plus two major streamers in Paramount+ and HBO Max.
David Ellison, who wrapped the merger of his Skydance Media with Paramount in August 2025, called the moment "historic." Shares of the newly combined company closed down 2.5% at $9.53 on Tuesday. Warner Bros. stock stopped trading on Nasdaq, and Skydance will list on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD.
Skydance's chair will be Ellison, and Ynon Kreiz will come aboard as co-chief executive officer to share oversight. Kreiz will handle day-to-day operations, and Ellison will focus on the creative vision and relationships with talent.
The sitting Paramount directors are staying put, and three newcomers are being added: Kreiz; Laurene Powell Jobs, who leads Emerson Collective as its founder and president; and Bobby Kotick, the former CEO of Activision Blizzard. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair will serve as a board adviser. He serves as the institute's executive chairman at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, a nonprofit that helps leaders govern.
Ellison committed to maintaining CBS and CNN as distinct entities overseen by different leaders. CNN CEO Mark Thompson will remain in place, and Bari Weiss will continue as editor-in-chief of CBS News. Paramount pledged to set up a board to protect editorial independence at CBS and CNN. Acknowledging "trepidations about this moment," Thompson told staff he has "real confidence" the new leadership understands and will support independent news at CNN.
On the creative and content side, James Gunn and Peter Safran will continue to lead DC Studios. Dana Goldberg, a longtime Skydance executive behind Top Gun: Maverick and several Mission: Impossible films, and Josh Greenstein, former Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group president who oversaw Spider-Man, will jointly run the Skydance Motion Picture Group. Casey Bloys will oversee programming across HBO Max and Paramount+.
A new consolidated TV unit spanning studios, networks, sports and cable will be overseen by George Cheeks, who came to Paramount in 2020. JB Perrette will continue to partner tightly with Bloys, serving as co-chair and as the chief business officer for Skydance TV and Skydance streaming.
One executive who will not be part of the new lineup is David Zaslav, the president and CEO of Warner Bros.; he is expected to exit with a potential haul exceeding $667 million in cash severance as well as stock awards that the sale triggers.
A deal this size resets the economics of an entire industry. Market Briefs covers media consolidation free every weekday.
This deal did not cruise to the finish. Paramount agreed to buy Warner Bros. in February after months of competing bids with Netflix, whose proposal covered the studios and streaming but not the cable channels. Ellison won by improving the offer and bringing in his father, Larry Ellison, to personally guarantee funding.
Paramount also covered a $2.8 billion termination fee to Netflix on Warner's behalf and accepted a ticking fee of about $7 million per day payable to Warner shareholders if the deal missed a Sept. 30 close. That added up to roughly $42 million by closing, according to a securities filing.
Regulatory approvals came quickly from the US Department of Justice, the European Union, and several other major jurisdictions, yet the schedule slipped after the timeline slipped when the Writers Guild of America and a coalition of 12 states filed two lawsuits that raised alarms over potential price hikes for consumers and job cuts. Signing the opposition letter were thousands from the ranks of actors, directors, writers and producers.
Under a negotiated settlement with the states led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, Paramount committed to releasing no fewer than 30 movies annually in theaters, keeping a 45-day exclusive run on the big screen before they hit home platforms. The company also agreed to establish an editorial independence board for CBS and CNN to address worries that the Ellison family's ties to President Donald Trump could influence coverage.
"The logic makes sense," said Michael J. Wolf, CEO of Activate Strategy, on Bloomberg TV.
Now comes the integration grind. Skydance takes on nearly $87 billion of total debt and must follow a strict calendar of theatrical releases set out in the settlement with the states. According to management, the company aims to deliver more than $6 billion in yearly synergies within three years by integrating tech and other operations, striking better supplier terms, reducing duplicative marketing, and consolidating real estate.
Paramount backer Gerry Cardinale, who founded RedBird Capital Partners and serves as its managing partner, rejected the notion that cost cuts mean sweeping layoffs. A company would not spend billions a year making movies and build a plan around firing "everybody in Hollywood," he said while speaking at the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles. "It's just the opposite." RedBird provided $4 billion in new equity to the transaction, taking its total Skydance commitment to $6 billion, said a person familiar with the investment who requested anonymity because the financing has not yet been made public.
Debt will remain a drag. Inflation concerns have driven up global borrowing costs, lifting interest expenses compared with issuing earlier this year. To finance the purchase, Paramount secured roughly $52 billion in loans and bonds over about a week, an exceptionally rapid raise for one of the biggest financings in recent memory.
For your wallet, here is the punchline: the new Skydance bundles premium IP, big networks and two sizable streamers, but it also carries substantial debt, aggressive cost targets and specific theatrical commitments. Execution is everything. If they hit the synergy and cash flow goals while keeping franchises fresh and newsrooms independent, it could change how and where your favorite stories get made - and what you pay to watch them.
What gets made, and what you pay to watch it, both change from here. Join Market Briefs free and follow the fallout.
