The controversial $8bn deal was finalized this week and while details are scarce, the future is set to look very different for one of the biggest Hollywood studios
T
he merger between Paramount and Skydance has finally been completed, with various roadblocks (including Stephen Colbert, apparently, as well as the related 60 Minutes settlement/bribery) cleared from the path of a new entity called Paramount, A Skydance Corporation.
It’s an appropriately franchise-y moniker for a merger between a major Hollywood studio and a company that made its bones as a constant financer of some of its biggest movie series. This ends (for now) years of speculation over what might be done with Paramount, a global conglomerate that was nonetheless considered on less sure footing than its fellow remaining big five studios, Disney, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros. (Well, maybe not the recently embattled Warner Bros, though they seem to have gotten a major reprieve with their killer 2025 slate) Skydance honcho David Ellison is the new Paramount CEO. The new co-chairs of Paramount Pictures will be Skydance executive Dana Goldberg and former Sony executive Josh Greenstein.
But with Ellison at the top boasting years of Skydance experience, he’ll ultimately be determining Paramount’s fortunes as a movie and TV company. The son of billionaire Larry Ellison, David for years seemed like he got into the movies primarily to work in closer proximity to airplanes. His first film as a producer was the 2005 flop Flyboys, a world war one fighter-pilot drama that was an early strike against the burgeoning movie career of star James Franco. Undeterred, the next year he founded Skydance Media, the kind of thing a 23-year-old budding pilot can do if they happen also to be a billionaire’s son.
