Paramount Skydance completed its takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday, bringing HBO, HBO Max, CNN and the Warner Bros. film studio into the same company as Paramount Pictures, Paramount+ and CBS. The combined business now operates under the name Skydance, and it leaves David Ellison in charge of one of the largest entertainment companies in the world, just over a year after Paramount first set out to buy Warner.
Warner shareholders received a little more than $31 a share in cash, and the company's stock stopped trading on Nasdaq. Skydance's Class B shares began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD. The Associated Press valued the purchase at $81 billion, or nearly $111 billion once debt is counted. CNBC put the deal's enterprise value at an estimated $110 billion, the same figure Reuters used.
Skydance describes itself as one of the largest media and entertainment companies in the world, with nearly $70 billion in revenue and more than 200 million streaming subscribers. CNBC noted that the merger pairs two of Hollywood's best-known studios with close to a third of basic cable programming, and the AP observed that it puts still more of the industry's power in the hands of the few major players that already run it.
The company said competition authorities in nearly 70 jurisdictions approved the transaction, and it argued that the combination will strengthen competition and expand consumer choice. "From the start, our ambition was to bring these two storied studios together and create a stronger competitor," Ellison said in a statement.
The deal grew out of a bidding war. Netflix agreed in December 2025 to buy Warner's studio and streaming business, and within days Paramount took a hostile, all-cash offer of $30 a share for the entire company, cable networks included, directly to shareholders. After Paramount raised its bid to $31 a share in February, Netflix declined to match, and Paramount and Warner signed a definitive merger agreement on Feb. 27. Warner shareholders approved the sale in April, and the Justice Department cleared it in June.
European regulators signed off in July after Paramount agreed to sell its stake in United International Pictures in Europe and to stay out of film distribution deals with Universal there for 10 years. The Federal Communications Commission separately allowed foreign investors to hold up to 100 percent indirect ownership of the company. Paramount had projected that Gulf investors would end up with an indirect stake of nearly half the equity but no votes, and the commission found that access to more capital would strengthen broadcasting. Anna Gomez, the FCC's only Democratic commissioner, was among the critics who called the decision alarming and unprecedented.
The last major obstacle came from the states. In July, Democratic attorneys general from 12 states, led by California's Rob Bonta, sued to stop the merger, arguing that it would "extinguish competition" and leave moviegoers and cable customers with fewer choices. The Writers Guild of America mounted a separate challenge, and Paramount agreed to push back the closing, possibly as late as June 2027, while the cases moved toward trial. Paramount settled with the states on Sept. 21, and a judge later approved the terms.
The settlement sets a floor on theatrical releases for five years, beginning at 30 films in each of the first two, and requires the company to spend at least $300 million more on American production than Paramount and Warner spent together last year. It also commits millions of dollars to help workers who lose jobs because of the merger and creates a News Editorial Independence Board to watch over CNN and CBS. Critics called the remedies too weak. Mark Thompson remains in charge of CNN, and Bari Weiss stays on as editor in chief of CBS News.
The deal included $47 billion in new equity priced at $12 a share, led by the Ellison family, RedBird Capital Partners, the Public Investment Fund, L'IMAD, the Qatar Investment Authority and LionTree, with debt financing led by Bank of America, Citigroup and Apollo. The AP reported that the Gulf backing came from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, while the Ellison family and RedBird hold all of Skydance's voting shares. Reuters reported that the company is expected to carry about $80 billion in debt, and Skydance says it aims to bring net leverage down to its target of 3.0 times by the end of 2029.
Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, will set creative direction and overall strategy, while co-chief executive Ynon Kreiz, the former head of Mattel, runs daily operations and the integration. The company has pledged at least 30 theatrical films a year, each with a theatrical window of at least 45 days, and plans to fold its streaming services into a single product over time. It is targeting more than $6 billion in run-rate cost savings within three years, mostly from technology, procurement, marketing and real estate, though Reuters reported that cuts on that scale are expected to reach jobs across Hollywood.