There’s no question that David Ellison, the doggedly ambitious CEO of Paramount Skydance, loves movies and filmmaking. In making his case for Paramount’s eye-poppingly pricey megadeal to merge with Warner Bros., he has repeatedly pledged that the combined company will release a lot more movies — to the tune of at least 30 titles per year in theaters.
When Ellison launched his hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, before he beat out Netflix to clinch a deal, he planted a flag with a pledge that the merged entity would pump more than 30 titles into theaters with “traditional” windows. And ever since, he’s been waving the 30-film number around like a magic wand that will save the movie business.
Ellison is now offering three-year contractually enforceable commitments to the U.S.’s two biggest theater chains, AMC Entertainment and Regal Cinemas, Bloomberg reported. That would guarantee exclusive 45-day theatrical windows and a moratorium on distributing the movies on streaming services for at least 90 days, with potentially financial penalties if Paramount failed to hold up its end of the bargain. It’s worth noting that the CEOs of AMC and Regal have come out strongly in support of the Paramount-WBD merger.
