Less than a 12 months in the past, David Ellison was the pinnacle of a small manufacturing firm. Now, he’s on the verge of turning into the king of Hollywood.
The Paramount Skydance CEO emerged victorious Thursday evening in a bidding struggle for Warner Bros. Discovery. It was a prize Paramount desperately wanted to survive, and profitable was not assured. It nonetheless isn’t.
The battle pitted Ellison against Netflix, the trade’s largest and most vital participant. President Donald Trump injected himself into the sweepstakes. So did the Saudis. And at one level, the bidding struggle concerned a hostile takeover threat.
But Ellison won. And if the deal is accomplished – pending shareholder approval and a probably tough regulatory evaluation – he’ll run one of many media trade’s largest film studios, streaming platforms and tv networks.
Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, has been a Hollywood producer for 20 years, forming Skydance along with his billionaire father in 2006 and financing some main franchises, together with Star Trek, Mission Impossible and Top Gun. When Paramount – an organization in disarray and deep monetary misery – began courting potential patrons in 2024, Ellison emerged because the white knight. Skydance accomplished its Paramount buy in August 2025.
But the corporate wants extra assist than Ellison alone can present. Paramount+ is an also-ran streaming platform with a number of fan-favorite franchises, NFL broadcast rights and a bunch of query marks. The film studio didn’t land a single film within the prime 10 grossing field workplace releases of 2025. Its cable networks barely make any unique content material anymore, past Comedy Central’s South Park and the Daily Show. CBS’ scores tumbled 12% in 2025, in accordance to Nielsen.
To battle in opposition to legacy media corporations like Disney and Netflix – and social media corporations like TikTook and YouTube – Paramount wanted scale. So Ellison virtually instantly began courting Warner Bros. Discovery.
Two months after Skydance purchased Paramount, WBD put itself up for sale. But Netflix emerged with WBD’s favored bid.
Netflix appeared to have the higher hand for months: It had loads of money to full the transaction, and Netflix deliberate to offload NCS and the remainder of WBD’s cable belongings in a tax-free spinoff earlier than it acquired HBO Max and Warner Bros. WBD continued to insist that Paramount’s supply – although it was for the whole WBD firm – undervalued the belongings.
WBD additionally questioned whether or not Paramount was really good for the cash, elevating questions in regards to the Saudi financing backing a part of the deal and whether or not Larry Ellison would actually assure that he’d bankroll the acquisition. Even after Paramount alleviated these considerations by letting WBD peer into Ellison’s books and making the Saudis nonvoting, non-board members, WBD nonetheless favorited Netflix.
So Paramount threatened a hostile takeover bid, pledging to take the deal instantly to shareholders. The tide turned final week, when Paramount stated it will revise its supply. Raising its bid by $1 – to $31 a share – Paramount won over WBD’s skeptical board Thursday. Hours later, after Netflix’s CEO left a gathering on the White House, Netflix stated – shockingly – it was dropping out of the bidding.
It’s not clear why Netflix dropped out so rapidly. It knew Paramount was going to up its bid.
Trump was and stays a significant X issue within the transaction. Although presidents sometimes keep out of antitrust investigations, Trump strongly urged that he favored a Paramount deal due to Ellison’s politics. Ellison donated to Democrats however has recently cozied up to Trump.
If the deal closes, Hollywood’s panorama will eternally change.
The film trade would lose certainly one of its 5 main studios. Paramount+, which wasn’t viable by itself, would instantly turn into a real streaming competitor to Netflix, Amazon and Disney+ by integrating HBO Max. And the Discovery and Viacom cable networks would achieve leverage in negotiations with advertisers and cable corporations.
The media trade is in disaster, and the mixture might assist each corporations survive.
But it won’t come with out appreciable ache: Paramount stated the merger will create $6 billion of synergies and value financial savings that may virtually actually lead to 1000’s of layoffs.
Unions, which have been sad with the prospect of any trade consolidation could give Paramount a tough time and could not need to play ball. Arguably Paramount’s most vital star, “Yellowstone” and “Landman” author Taylor Sherdian plans to depart for NBCUniversal on the conclusion of his present contract.
And since Ellison took the helm at Paramount, the corporate has been accused of bowing to Trump. It paid Trump hundreds of thousands of {dollars} after the president sued over a 60 Minutes edit of its interview of former Vice President Kamala Harris that he didn’t like. It canceled Stephen Colbert’s Late Show – one of the bitingly critical-of-Trump exhibits on TV. And 60 Minutes quickly held a phase in regards to the El Salvadorian jail the Trump administration despatched some deportees to.
Those questions will stay as the corporate seeks to combine with WBD – together with NCS, a information outlet that Trump says he despises.
Shareholders will want to approve the deal – and so will regulators. Although Netflix’s deal confronted a steep regulatory hurdle within the United States due to the sheer market energy it will have created, the Paramount deal for WBD is probably not as powerful a promote at house.
Although it removes a significant participant from Hollywood, the mixed firm nonetheless won’t strategy Netflix’s scale. Although layoffs are a close to certainty after the deal is consummated, layoffs have been a close to certainty with out a deal as a result of every firm individually lacked endurance in a quickly altering media panorama. Neither had a strong parks enterprise like Disney or Universal, and the whole trade has been upended by YouTube and social media.
Regulation abroad could also be a harder promote. That’s why the deal might take months – and maybe greater than a 12 months – to finalize.
It might additionally entice some copycats. After the deal, Disney, Comcast and Sony might be left with out dance companions, and they could be persuaded to bulk up to compete with the newly mixed big.
Scale could assist kick the can far down the highway. But even with its huge scale, the long-term prospects for a possible Paramount-WBD merger stay a query.
People are going to the theater much less. They’re spending much less time consuming scripted comedies and dramas, and they’re changing it with scrolling on their telephones. Audiences are much less excited about information and much less excited about watching TV.
But there actually wasn’t a lot different choice for David Ellison, who’s about to rule Paramount and WBD … and Hollywood together with them.