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Paramount’s Warner Bros. Acquisition Creates A Media Empire
Paramount Warner Bros. Discovery A Skydance Corporation // Illustration by Kate Walker
After surprisingly winning the bidding war for Warner Bros. Discovery, David Ellison will now control one of the largest media empires in Hollywood history.
The Big Picture: David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has gone from owning a relatively small studio, Skydance, to becoming one of the most powerful media moguls in just a few short years. At only 43, Ellison now has the opportunity to build a traditional studio that rivals Disney in both scale and value.
Behind The Scenes: When the dust settled, WBD sold for a whopping $110 billion, making it the biggest movie-and-TV studio acquisition ever.
The deal comes out to $31 a share — a major jump from Paramount’s initial offer of $19 a share. $47 billion in equity will be provided by the Ellison family and RedBird Capital Partners, while $54 billion in debt will come from Bank of America, Citigroup, and Apollo.
That’s a significant amount of debt layered onto an already debt-heavy WBD, which is why the company is targeting at least $6 billion in synergies (read: cost savings), including efficiencies, real estate consolidation, and, yes, plenty of layoffs.
The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026 — a notably quick timeline — and the company appears to have cleared federal antitrust review (expect state AGs to fight it, though).
Final Deal: With both companies under his control, Ellison would command a library of more than 15,000 film and TV titles (along with plenty of marquee IP), top-tier sports rights like the NFL and NCAA Basketball, and a broad cable portfolio that includes news brands CBS and CNN. That’s on top of owning two streaming services — HBO Max and Paramount+. Wow.
Of course, the big question in Hollywood around either the Paramount or Netflix deal was theatrical moviegoing — the crown-jewel business at both studios. Ellison is promising to run the studios as independent entities, each releasing at least 15 movies with a minimum 45-day window and traditional pay windows. It’s a big bet that, when it comes to in-person moviegoing, more will be merrier.
Coming Soon: With Oracle as a major shareholder in the new American TikTok, expect the combined Paramount/WBD entity to pursue a strategic partnership with the platform.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.