Skydance, the company formed through the merger of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) and Paramount, is now up and running.
Carrying the name of David Ellison’s former production company, the business houses some of the most iconic names and brands from the past 100 years of TV and movie history, including Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Friends, Game of Thrones, Sex in the City, HBO, DC, Showtime, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures.
It has over 200m subscribers across HBO Max, Paramount+ and Discovery+ plus multiple subscription-free streaming apps including 5 in the UK and dozens of channels such as CBS, CNN, MTV, Comedy Central and TNT Sports.
Through Warner Bros. Games, which brings titles based on the studios’ biggest brands to consoles and PCs, it’s also a major player in the gaming sector.
To forge the company Ellison first faced down rival bids for Paramount Global, which he bought last year, and then snatched WBD from Netflix – triggering both a lawsuit and celebrity-led campaign hoping to block the deal.
However the Democrat Attorneys General who brought the case ultimately accepted a fairly weak set of promises, paving the way for the deal to proceed.
To achieve his ambitions Ellison has also amassed a huge $80 billion pile of debt which opponents argue will require the cutting of thousands of jobs in order to service and, over time, reduce.
Ellison and his team say this can “primarily” be achieved through “technology, integration and procurement, marketing and real estate rationalization.”
Today the talk was of the combined company “creating more opportunities and more jobs for creatives, both in front of and behind the camera” through the commissioning of new content and licensing its vast libraries to third parties.
Audiences are being promised “a minimum of 30 high-quality theatrical films” each year and “significant improvements” to the firm’s streaming services which it today confirmed “will unify into a single service over time”.
In a statement, Ellison said: “Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry.
“From the start, our ambition was to bring these two storied studios together and create a stronger competitor, with the talent, resources, and reach to tell great stories in every genre, on every platform, for audiences everywhere. Now that ambition is a reality.
“We’re grateful to everyone who made this possible – the employees, creative talent, and production teams of both companies, who worked tirelessly to get us here and inspire audiences around the world every day, as well as the advisors and partners who guided this transaction to completion.
“Our focus now turns to the future: building a company that empowers creatives, entertains audiences and rewards shareholders. We couldn’t be more excited to get to work.”