Source: This story originated with Deadline.
David Ellison is positioning the newly completed merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery as Hollywood’s answer to the competitive pressure created when major technology companies expanded into media.
The Skydance CEO argued that traditional media businesses “didn’t pivot fast enough” as that shift began roughly a decade ago. He made his case during a CNBC interview Thursday, Deadline reported, before executives from the merged company — now called simply Skydance — rang the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.
For Ellison, the transaction is intended to address strategic missteps that left entertainment companies trying to catch up with technology-driven competitors.
“We can talk a lot about the owner-operator entrepreneurial culture of Silicon Valley versus the culture of Hollywood,” Ellison said. “That candidly put the businesses in this position. This transaction is the solution to those mistakes 10 years ago. Big tech took platform technology pushed into media.”
The merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery closed Tuesday, creating a company with a broad collection of intellectual property, sports and news assets. Ellison’s pitch is that those holdings, combined with an expanded product and technology operation, can give Skydance the tools to compete with companies emerging from Silicon Valley.
“People are still there for the content,” he said. “They’re there for the stories. They’re there for the news they love, the sports they love, the stories they love.”
Ellison continued: “We have assembled an unmatched portfolio of intellectual property, sports, and news assets, and then we are building a product and tech organization that can compete with anybody coming out of Silicon Valley. That is going to enable us to push back, and … to pivot.”
Streaming takes center stage
Streaming is central to Skydance’s strategy. The combination brings Paramount together with HBO Max and elevates the merged business into a major direct-to-consumer player.
Ellison said he sees further domestic opportunities in the United States, as well as significant potential outside the country because the services remain at an early stage internationally. He also said the company’s FAST business is expanding in both engagement and market share.
“We have incredible room to run here in the States domestically,” Ellison said. “These services are still nascent internationally, so we have a tremendous amount of room to grow in the international business. Our FAST business is growing rapidly, both in terms of engagement and market share.”
The CEO also emphasized the scale of the merged company’s content investment. According to Ellison, its output includes 30 movies annually and more than 180 series.
“We are investing more in content than any of our peers,” he said. “Like, just talk about the scale of it: 30 movies a year, over 180 series.”
Ellison’s argument is that combining the businesses moves Skydance more quickly toward a point at which growth from its studio and streaming operations can exceed the decline of linear television.
“This accelerates streaming growth by years as a standalone company, and you get to that inflection point very, very quickly to where the growth businesses of studios and streaming outpaces linear declines,” he said.
Integration begins across advertising and technology
With the deal now closed, Skydance has begun bringing together key operations across the former companies. Advertising sales are being unified across the platforms, while product and technology teams are working to integrate the backend technology systems.
Those efforts reflect the two parts of Ellison’s broader case for the merger: using the combined company’s entertainment, sports and news portfolio to attract audiences while building the technical infrastructure needed to compete in a market reshaped by technology companies.
The opening-bell appearance marked the public arrival of the newly merged Skydance just two days after the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery transaction was completed. Ellison is now betting that its expanded streaming scale, content output and technology investment can deliver the pivot he believes legacy media failed to make a decade earlier.
ShowBiz Take
The combination puts Paramount and HBO Max under one company with a broad portfolio of film and television IP, sports and news, making streaming central to Skydance’s strategy for countering declines in linear media. Its planned output of 30 movies and more than 180 series also underscores the scale of content supporting that push.
For the entertainment business, unifying advertising, product teams and backend technology could accelerate streaming growth while expanding opportunities in international markets and FAST services. The key test will be whether those growth businesses can outpace the company’s linear declines, as Ellison projects.