Paramount names combined company Skydance ahead of Tuesday close

Federal settlement commits new company to at least 30 films a year

The announcement that the combined company would carry the Skydance name — the boutique film and TV production company Ellison founded before his takeover of Paramount and Warner Bros. — came as senior leaders at Paramount were expected to spend the weekend completing integration strategies ahead of Tuesday’s expected close. A video announcement styled as a Hollywood sizzle reel, set to soaring music, showcased clips from “Titanic,” “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Sopranos” that will now sit under Ellison’s control. Ellison is expected to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange next week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The deal is set to close after about a year spent fending off rival bidders, federal regulators and state attorneys general. A federal judge approved a settlement Wednesday resolving the antitrust lawsuit filed by 12 state attorneys general who had sought to block the deal. The settlement’s terms are now legally binding: the company must release at least 30 movies a year and spend at least $1.5 billion more on domestic production over five years, and Ellison will need to invest heavily in content for the streaming operation. The agreement also includes protections for the editorial independence of CBS and CNN, money allocated for entertainment worker benefits, and a commitment to negotiate distribution deals for the two companies’ basic cable channels separately.

The financial scale of the integration will be significant. Ellison’s challenge will be to turn his vast collection of assets into a company capable of competing with Netflix, Disney, Amazon and Apple while simultaneously taking billions of dollars in costs out of the business. Doing so will require combining overlapping operations and eliminating jobs without undermining the movies, television shows and streaming programming Ellison and the company need to compete for audiences. Combining the two companies will also require managing nearly $80 billion in debt. Paramount has told investors it expects $6 billion in annual synergies within three years, a target that has raised concern in Hollywood about layoffs. At the same time, Ellison has committed to continue investing heavily in content. Cardinale, founder and managing partner of Paramount co-controlling shareholder RedBird Capital Partners, said at a Bloomberg conference this week that the majority of cost savings would not come from layoffs. “You don’t spend $40 billion a year making movies and think that your entire premise of your business plan is to fire everyone in Hollywood,” Cardinale said. The NFL is also expected to exercise an option to increase its deals with rights holders in coming years and to seek a significant increase in rights fees. “It’s definitely gonna go up,” Cardinale said.

Ellison has moved quickly to put his stamp on the combined company and to recruit help operating it. Earlier this week, he tapped Mattel CEO Kreiz as co-CEO. Kreiz brings more than three decades in the entertainment business and experience overseeing a large public company. During his tenure at Mattel, he pushed the company beyond its traditional toy business, developing franchises such as Barbie and Hot Wheels into films, television and games — a playbook that could translate readily to Paramount and Warner, which together control a deep bench of franchises including Batman, Superman, Harry Potter, Star Trek, Mission: Impossible, Transformers and SpongeBob SquarePants. “We think the appointment of an experienced public company CEO makes sense in this scenario given the size of the combined company and complexity of the integration ahead,” Raymond James analyst Ric Prentiss said in a report.

Ellison has also selected HBO and HBO Max content chief Bloys to oversee streaming programming strategy for the combined company, according to people familiar with the matter. Holland, the Paramount streaming head, stepped down Tuesday, clearing the way for Bloys. Warner film studio heads Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy are not expected to join the new company, people familiar with the matter said; their record includes critically acclaimed films but several box-office disappointments. Ellison is expected to unveil the combined company’s organizational structure in the coming days, including leadership teams for the movie and television studios.

Combining CNN and CBS News will be its own challenge. The two organizations have different newsroom cultures, labor structures and business models — cable news and broadcast television. Ellison is not putting a single executive in charge of both news operations. He has been wooing CNN CEO Mark Thompson to remain at the network after the deal closes, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. There are no immediate plans to give CBS News Editor in Chief Bari Weiss a role in CNN’s management, people familiar with the matter said. Some CNN staffers have raised concerns about Weiss having influence over the network’s operations; her tenure at CBS News has generated controversy, including an overhaul of “60 Minutes” that led to the departures of key talent and producers.

The consolidation has prompted concern in Hollywood, where filmmakers and other talent worry that concentrating so much production and distribution under one owner could leave them with fewer places to sell their work. Ellison’s father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, whose family controls Paramount, has close ties to President Trump, The Wall Street Journal reported, adding another source of tension in Hollywood, particularly amid concerns about the future direction of CNN and CBS News. In an interview, Ellison said the structure would give him the “opportunity to be able to focus on the creative, on the technology, capital allocation and overall strategic vision of the company.”

“We are going to be a champion for artists, and we’re going to unlock a tremendous amount of shareholder value,” Ellison said. He said he had set his sights on Warner long before his first bid, and that the company had begun planning for the combination before closing the Paramount transaction in August 2025. “We started planning for Warner Bros. before we’d even closed on the Paramount transaction,” Ellison said. His pursuit of Warner entailed nine bids and a showdown with Netflix, followed by a long effort to secure regulatory approval around the world. He first offered Warner CEO David Zaslav $19 a share a year ago, but ultimately agreed to pay $31 a share in cash to win the bidding war, with the Ellison family backstopping the deal.