Paramount and Warner Bros. Will Operate as Skydance After $110 Billion Merger

Two of Hollywood’s oldest studios are about to share a new corporate name. Paramount chief executive David Ellison announced on Friday that once Paramount’s roughly $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery is completed, the combined company will be called Skydance, after the film production company Ellison founded.

The deal was expected to close on Tuesday, TechCrunch reported. It brings under one roof the Paramount and Warner Bros. film studios, the streaming services Paramount+ and HBO Max, and television networks including CBS, CNN, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central and Food Network. The new company will also control franchises such as The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the DC Universe and Yellowstone.

In a post on X, Ellison said the Paramount and Warner Bros. brands would remain central and that a new corporate identity was never meant to diminish or overshadow either one. Reuters, in a report published by NBC News, said Ellison presented the Skydance name as a way to preserve the separate identities of the two studios, while analysts said it also underlines his personal control over some of entertainment’s most valuable brands.

Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, founded Skydance, which Reuters said dates to 2010 and backed films including Top Gun: Maverick. It merged with Paramount last year and then won a bidding contest for Warner Bros. against Netflix, which had earlier agreed to buy Warner’s studio and streaming businesses.

The merger faced resistance. Twelve states sued to block it, arguing that it would reduce competition and hurt consumers and workers, TechCrunch reported. A judge approved a settlement with the state attorneys general in the days before the announcement, and a settlement with a Hollywood writers union also cleared a major obstacle, according to Reuters.

Supporters of the deal argue that traditional studios need far greater scale to survive against technology giants and streaming services with deeper pockets, and that combining libraries and streaming platforms gives the merged company a better chance to compete. The company is targeting more than $6 billion in cost savings within three years, Agence France-Presse reported.

Critics see a different picture: a single owner holding two major film studios, a broadcast network and a leading cable news channel, carrying an expected debt load of about $80 billion, according to Cox Media Group. Many in the industry expect the savings to come with deep cuts across Hollywood. Questions about editorial independence at CBS News and CNN are likely to follow the company as well, though Reuters, in its report published by NBC News, said the current leaders of both newsrooms will stay in their posts, a detail the paper could not independently confirm.

For audiences, the immediate changes may be modest. The longer-term question is whether one of the largest media combinations in years produces more ambitious films and shows, or fewer choices.