LAHORE MIRROR (REUTERS) — Paramount Skydance completed its blockbuster $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros Discovery on Tuesday, creating a Hollywood heavyweight that hands CEO David Ellison control of one of the world’s largest entertainment and news businesses.
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 — forming an expansive entertainment company spanning film, TV and news.
The merger is a chance “to build the next-generation media and entertainment company, powered by creativity and technology,” Ellison said in a memo to employees on Tuesday, outlining his vision.
The goal, he added, was not simply to get bigger but “to take on the biggest players in our industry.”
The new company, called Skydance, is the latest iteration of a conglomerate once controlled by the late Sumner Redstone that has precipitously shrunk over the years, as audiences flock to news and entertainment delivered by a growing cadre of smaller publishers and creators who are chipping away at once-mighty Hollywood.
Skydance not only faces competition from Netflix, Disney and others, but also from tech companies Apple, Meta, and Amazon, as well as the growing threat of AI.
Ellison said the merger was necessary to better take on these challengers at a time when the media industry had become complacent.
“They allowed Netflix to disrupt their business,” he told reporters in a press conference on Tuesday.
“They allowed Amazon Prime Video to come and disrupt their business. They didn’t transform, and they held on to the past for too long.”
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.
It comes as Hollywood faces declining cable-TV subscriptions, the high cost of competing for streaming audiences and persistent pressure from unions over jobs and creative workers’ rights.
