And so David Ellison gets in the driver’s seat.
Skydance’s newly formed executive leadership team, led by chairman and CEO Ellison and co-CEO Ynon Kreiz, is facing the challenge of challenging Warner Bros. Hours after their acquisition officially closed, Discovery staged a notable press junket at the Paramount store in Hollywood.
Ellison and Kreiz, both wearing jeans and a black jacket, answered questions from the national press for about 30 minutes during Stage 3 of the party. The event kicked off with a high-octane trailer that showed off the staggering amount of IP Skydance currently has, from Batman to “Game of Thrones” to the Star Trek universe to “Scream.”
The event was attended by RedBird Capital founder and Skydance board member Gerry Cardinale; Skydance president Andy Gordon; Makan Delrahim, chief legal officer and global president; motion picture group co-chairmen Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein; chief content officer Casey Bloys; DC Studios co-chairman Peter Safran; Skydance CMO Rebecca Mall; DTC manager JB Perrette and many more. Here’s what Diversity learned on the ground.
Real estate
Warner Bros. Having acquired such a gem and historic Paramount expansion as the stock, questions turned to where exactly Ellison and Kreiz would put their briefcases.
“We’re definitely going to keep both parties, and from that standpoint, you’ll probably see us holding film in one and television and streaming in the other,” Ellison said. “We will travel back and forth to the east coast as needed and to our Santa Monica offices for animation.”
We’d venture to guess that the Warner lot in Burbank, where founder Jack Warner’s rosebushes still bloom, will host feature films. Of course, no final decisions have been made.
Chief Divided
How will Ellison and Kreiz handle individual missions? The former Mattel CEO touched on the workloads involved.
“All business units report to both of us, and there will be a natural separation between us in terms of our respective experiences and concentrations, which we believe are highly complementary,” Kreiz said. “David will focus on creative technology and long-term strategy – particularly as it relates to the creative side of the business. I will focus more on operations and the day-to-day management of the business, including integration, especially the early stage. But it’s important to say that we work closely together. That doesn’t mean that David won’t be very involved in integration and key operational decisions, or that I won’t be involved in creative.”
Trump of Everything
There was a tense moment when a reporter asked Ellison about the company’s ties to President Trump. The journalist referenced Ellison’s initial comment that he had “great conversations with Donald Trump about CNN.”
Asked about the content of those conversations about his newly acquired cable news giant, Ellison said: “To be absolutely clear, we have not talked about the news with any political leader of any party, other than to say that we want to be in the truth business and we want to be in the trust business and we believe in complete editorial independence.” A representative asked the emperor to provide more information about why he traveled to D.C. for months
“Makan and I started working on a federal project. [tax incentive for production] in October last year. Paramount’s domestic production rate is around 5%. These jobs are sent abroad. Almost no filming takes place in California, where the work was born. This is something we want to change,” Ellison said. “The person who led this effort was the late Senator Lindsey Graham. We had numerous meetings with the president and Senator Graham, which enabled the president to effectively say, ‘Yes, I see that, and yes, I want to support that.’ A federal rebate can only be made on a bipartisan basis.
Skydance Film: Making 30 Movies a Year Will Be a Delicate Dance
Ellison and Kreiz said new film chiefs Goldberg and Greenstein were leading the charge at Warner Bros., which boasted 35 films in its first year. and announced that he would be responsible for “choreographing” the combined release schedules of the Paramount slate. With a movie released every 11 days, and six of those dates overlapping with other movies, how can studios avoid cannibalizing each other at the box office?
“One of the things we do Negative To do so is to withdraw creative resources. “We are not holding back on marketing resources to ensure that all of these films are properly released with the attention they deserve,” Ellison said. “Dana and Josh will manage the schedule appropriately to ensure that we are maximizing profitability and maximizing opportunity for every story we tell.”
Kreiz stated that it all depends on coordination. “The plan is to keep the studios creatively independent. We will then choreograph the release schedule to optimize it by genre and audience demographics to achieve what is best for the company as a whole.”
In order to protect the studios’ individual identities, Warner Bros. and the Paramount logos will be the first logos that audiences see at the beginning of each studio’s respective films; “A Skydance Company” will be billed below.
“When you put the names together, I felt like you were diminishing that legacy,” Ellison said, explaining his thought processes. “We deeply respect and love these brands, and this felt like a way to build something new while honoring the incredible legacy we are lucky to be custodians of.”
Ellison and Kreiz emphasized that they are equally invested in spending on original films as they are in leveraging the huge stability of intellectual property.
Pointing to the success of Warner Bros., Ellison said, “We will create a completely diverse page.” For example, “Sinners”. (The filmmaker admitted that Ryan Coogler’s $90 million blockbuster is his favorite movie of 2025.) “You’ll definitely see us telling original stories, continuing our franchises, and producing across all genres.”
With that in mind, when will “Barbie 2” be released? “It’s too early to talk about that,” Kreiz said.
Cord cutting?
Skydance has no plans to divest any of its cable networks or merge its three TV studios; at least for now.
Kreiz, Warner Bros. TV said the decision to keep CBS Studios and Paramount TV Studios as separate entities with their own leaders (all reporting to newly appointed Skydance TV co-president and chief content officer George Cheeks) is all “about scale. We’re not looking to reduce output production.”
Warner Bros. While TV has more than 80 original series, CBS Studios produces nearly 60 series and Paramount TV Studios also has a rich roster. Kreiz said he doesn’t think studios will compete with each other the way they do when pursuing projects — but he also added: “In order to create quality content, to attract the right talent, to really be able to guide those projects in the right way, you have to keep certain creative pieces independent and get them up and running semi-autonomously. We won’t be competing directly, we’ll be coordinating and adapting, in the sense that the company is still a single platform.”
Warner Bros. Of the roughly 50 cable networks Skydance will now operate, which combines Discovery U.S. networks and Paramount’s media networks under Channing Dungey (who reports to Cheeks), Kreiz said maintaining that large roster is also about achieving “economic scale.” Many of these networks are not in the active programming business, but they still secure licensing fees that are important revenue drivers for the company’s profitability.
“The number one priority for the company is to establish Skydance as a content engine, the leading content engine in the world, and that’s really the spirit of what this company is about,” Kreiz said. “The investment thesis is about increasing output and establishing the company as a linear content engine. When you do that, you can drive growth in the digital business. You can continue to optimize your linear channels around the world, which is big business.”