Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery to Merge Under Skydance Name
David Ellison’s long-anticipated acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery will rebrand the combined entity as Skydance, preserving both studios’ identities while creating a new corporate home.
Paramount chairman and CEO David Ellison announced the merged company will be named Skydance, a name he selected nearly 20 years ago. The settlement ending an antitrust lawsuit paves the way for the deal to close by Tuesday, after nearly 70 regulators approved it.
Though the corporate parent will become Skydance, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery will retain their historic names and operations. Paramount will keep its Melrose Avenue lot and Warner Bros. its Burbank studio, per the settlement.
Ynon Kreiz, former Mattel CEO, will lead day-to-day operations with a $5 million annual salary, a $4.9 million target bonus, and a $31.5 million signing bonus. HBO chairman Casey Bloys is expected to head streaming programming, while Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy will step down as Warner Bros. co-chairs.
Skydance will carry over $80 billion in debt and aim for $6 billion in cost cuts over three years, through tech integration and layoffs, per RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav will exit with an $887 million golden parachute.
Prepared with AI assistance from the linked source.
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