Paramount Pictures
Now that Shari Redstone has signed the dotted line to sell her father’s media empire to Skydance and RedBird Capital, what does the future hold for her?
The idea of a merger between Skydance (David Ellison’s production arm behind franchises like “Mission Impossible”) and Paramount Global has been floated in dribs and drabs over the past few months of a blockbuster deal (which was only officially canceled a few weeks ago). A formal announcement Sunday night sheds some light on what Paramount’s new owners have in store.
First, and perhaps most importantly, Skydance is injecting $1.5 billion into Paramount’s balance sheet — a cash infusion that hopes to encourage the studio to attract creatives with “stability,” as the official announcement puts it, and make brands like Paramount Pictures and CBS more competitive for top talent and packages.
New Paramount, the working name for the combined companies, “will be a premier, creator-driven destination for storytellers dedicated to premium content and will be positioned to improve profitability, foster stability and independence for creators, and enable greater investment in growth areas,” the announcement said.
The deal will be led by former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell and chairman and CEO Ellison. The two men, who have “deep operational experience and proven expertise in leading the creative process,” will officially take over once the transaction is completed, expected to close mid-next year. Shell returns to the top of the media industry after being forced to step down as NBCU CEO following allegations of sexual harassment and an investigation that found “inappropriate conduct.”
In the meantime, Paramount’s interim CEOs, George Cheeks, Brian Robbins and Chris McCarthy, have pledged to continue their campaign of cost-cutting and asset sales.
At the same time, Ellison indicated that his own family business, tech giant Oracle, led by his father Larry Ellison, will play a major role, as “the focus on technological advancements, across multiple entertainment platforms including animation, gaming, film, sports, news and television” is a priority. It’s unclear exactly what technologies they’re referring to and how they’ll be applied, but Hollywood is undoubtedly at an inflection point with artificial intelligence and how it’s going to change the future of content.
This is good news for Paramount+, the media company’s streaming service that has about 72 million subscribers after a decade of operation. Competitors like Netflix and Disney+ have hundreds of millions of subscribers.
From the outset, Skydance committed to bringing a “modernized infrastructure with scalability and ingenuity,” which includes Paramount’s direct-to-consumer platforms, ad-supported streaming service Pluto and linear networks like MTV.
Gerry Cardinale, who heads investor RedBird and will invest in the new Paramount with the Ellison family, was perhaps most explicit about what a traditional media company must accomplish in today’s landscape.
“As one of Hollywood’s iconic brands and media libraries, Paramount has the intellectual property foundation to ensure its longevity through this evolution – but it will take a new generation of visionary leadership and experienced operational management to navigate this next phase,” Cardinale said.
Skydance-Paramount “will be the driving force behind how these traditional media companies will have to be run in the future,” he concluded.
