Paramount Completes $110 Billion Warner Bros. Discovery Takeover, Forming Skydance

Paramount Skydance completed its $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, closing one of the largest media deals on record and placing the combined company, renamed Skydance, under chief executive David Ellison, according to Reuters.

The closing unites the studios behind “Mission: Impossible,” “Harry Potter” and the DC films with television and streaming brands including CBS, CNN, Paramount+ and HBO Max, Reuters reported. Shares of the combined company shifted from Nasdaq to the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday under the ticker SKYD. Settlements with a coalition of U.S. states and a Hollywood writers union cleared the last major legal obstacles, according to Reuters.

One company, two historic studios

Ellison said last week that the Skydance name was picked so the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios could keep their separate identities under one parent, according to Reuters. USA Today reported that he made the same point to the public, arguing that joining the two studios would give them a stronger engine rather than erase their histories.

Former Mattel chief executive Ynon Kreiz will serve as co-CEO, handling daily operations and the integration work, while Ellison directs creative and overall strategy, according to Reuters. CNN chief Mark Thompson and CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss will stay in their roles, Reuters reported.

The bill that comes with it

The new company starts life carrying roughly $80 billion in debt and a plan to find about $6 billion in savings, much of it, the company has said, from combining streaming technology and cloud services rather than payroll, according to Reuters. Even so, Reuters noted the size of the cuts is expected to reach jobs across the industry, at a moment when cable subscriptions keep shrinking and streaming competition stays expensive.

For viewers, little changes on day one. HBO Max and Paramount+ remain separate services for now, USA Today reported, and Ellison has said the two movie studios will keep operating apart, with plans for roughly 15 theatrical releases a year from each and a 45-day window before films move to streaming. The state settlement also commits the combined studios to about 30 films a year over the next few years, according to USA Today.

Skydance itself is a young company by Hollywood standards. Ellison founded it in 2010, built its name financing hits such as “Top Gun: Maverick,” merged it with Paramount last year and then outlasted rival interest from Netflix and Comcast to land Warner Bros., according to Reuters.

Reporting based on coverage by Reuters and USA Today.