Paramount Skydance completed its blockbuster $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, creating a Hollywood heavyweight called Skydance and handing CEO David Ellison control of one of the world’s largest entertainment companies.
The deal brings together the studios behind “Mission: Impossible,” “Harry Potter” and DC Studios alongside major television and streaming networks such as CBS, CNN, Paramount+ and HBO Max — a combined company spanning film, TV and news, Reuters reports. Shares of the combined company moved to the New York Stock Exchange from Nasdaq on Tuesday to trade under the ticker “SKYD.”
Settlements with a coalition of US states and a Hollywood writers union removed the main legal barriers to the merger, one of the largest in media history. The deal survived a heated bidding contest with Netflix and drawn-out regulatory scrutiny.
Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, said the Skydance name was chosen to preserve the individual identities of the Paramount and Warner Bros. studios rather than merging them under one brand. But analysts say the name underscores how completely Hollywood’s most iconic brands now answer to him — and puts two of America’s most influential news outlets, CNN and CBS, under a single billionaire owner.
