When David Ellison had an informal meeting with media managers based in New York at the beginning of this year in a restaurant in the city in which the Hollywood producer was introduced to the people with whom he would soon communicate, the atmosphere was the least. The SkyDance founder was waiting for the FCC's approval for his offer to buy Paramount, and so he had a little talk and listened to the most part. But the participants noticed a point about Ellison: he spoke a lot about games.
The focus spoke volumes about where Ellison's eye is trained when he takes over paramount: Steward a company that is anchored by a traditional film studio and eaten by many outdated television injuries is certain, but also a large boost for digital limits.
Skydance already has a hand in this world with VR games like archangel And The Walking Dead: Saints and sinnersAnd the chance to develop and acquire gaming companies to combine with the robust intellectual properties of Paramount and 80 million streaming service Paramount+ could prove to be attractive.
On August 7, the 8 billion dollar deal of Skydance paramount deal finally closes, with Ellison being responsible for the country's second oldest studio-and in particular one of the troubled media companies. For the 42-year-old, the news is a remarkable increase, which only 15 years after his company was founded and not much longer since he was written off as a wannabe actor and USC film school, how he was vanity projects such as projecting like Flyboys. Despite the billion -dollar subjects in which Ellison's family – especially Father Larry Ellison, worth 303 billion US dollars, has been preserved in accordance with Bloomberg Milliardaires Index – is the nature of things that are devoted to biographers.
The comeback for Paramount, on the other hand, is anything but safe. When control over the company changes from a prominent American business family (the Redstones) to another, Ellison has overlooked his Tech game and quoted the friend of the family, Steve Jobs, as Mentor, who gave him hard love for Skydance early.
Certainly the millennial comes with some advantages: the emergence of the AI (which will make content production cheaper, among other things); The use of Oracle's top cloud service to compete with what Amazon MGM can do with Amazon Web Services (AWS). The existing partnerships of Skydance with Apple and Meta on the game side; And even the tempting rumors of an Oracle Stateside Tikok purchase. (If nothing else, these algorithms will make Paramount+ Netflix-Y stickier.) In particular, the automation factor could be charged at Paramount, which, in contrast to competitors and universal, has not taken an oppositional attitude towards technology.
Everyone proposes a company with a lot of strategic upward trend, and those who look at Paramount as well as Ran could be remembered that the rules are reset for everyone, since personalized content and automated production are preparing for the industry. “He is the kind of person who will take advantage of these innovations,” says a long -time manager who knows Ellison and Paramount but is not bound to one.
Don Granger, Dana Goldberg and David Ellison visit on May 19, 2025 in New York City in the American Museum of Natural History in Apple 'Brunnen of the Youth Premiere.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
But how much the existing infrastructure allows remains to be seen. Paramount is still a company that was built for the 90s, with a network TV business in CBS, which is solid, although hardly shiny and a cable business that is both. Film studios are generally not a bet of the 2020s, especially if some of their largest franchise companies like Mission: impossible And Star Trekare many rates deep.
Despite all the hype about technology, the management team is largely in the old school in Hollywood, since new C-suite inmates such as Jeff Shell, Josh Greenstein Josh Greenstein, and even Netflix mainstop Cindy Holland, not the calculation.
No acquaintance is still waiting in Skydance's Wings; No lively tech import is ready to conquer Hollywood by storm.
And the speech of great synergies of tech-content synergies have accompanied many media melting (remember AOL-TIME WARNER? Or AT & T warner?
An X factor is Andy Gordon, an incoming board member and a long-time Goldman Sachs Kingmaker who has spent Gerry Cardinal's Entertainment-Sorge Management company Redbird Capital in the past five years-and who brought a lot of money together with the Korean Juggernaut-CJ group. (Together with Larry Ellison, Redbird also contributed to financing the acquisition.)
The connections between Redbird and the new par go deep – Shell also come from there – and the expectation is that Gordon as an incoming Paramount Coo and Chief Strategic Officer will point out the type of offers for his new company, which he will know with people with all3media and artificial equity (you know with digital and AI companies).
Ellison is the first number with all the technical ties, even a familiar who takes over a legacy media company and crosses a bridge that Disney, Universal and Rupert Murdoch do not approach from approach. (The new paramount president Jeff Shell likes this fact and calls his allies “the perfect manager for the Hollywood company of the next generation”, since he can not only be read at a table, but can also go into the next room and code.)
At least Ellison's Hollywood experience has grown; While he was sometimes breathed out as a financier as part of earlier Paramount regime, his role turned into somewhat consistent creative under the recently carried out studio boss Jim Gianopulos and Brian Robbins.
The Redbird Capital partners of Ellison Family and Gerry Cardinale invest 2.4 billion US dollars to buy the Redstone holding company, national amusements.
Nevertheless, it is not easy to do Hollywood nuts and bolts like Talent Relations correctly, and to say that Ellison received a “C” negotiations on a new global streaming offer in one of his first tests as a mogul South Park The Creator Trey Parker and Matt Stone – would probably contain a certain inflation. A person with knowledge of the negotiations says that Ellison had assured the couple's repetitions that he would complete a deal, but days turned without movement in weeks. The foot brown led Parker and Stone to bend their power, also due to the impending legal steps against Shell and Redbird Capital on the allegedly manipulative negotiations with competitors to reduce the prize for Paramount. The Southern parkERS finally got her big payment day.
Cbs' scrap by Stephen Colbert and the whole Late show The franchise company was neither very popular for the talent community, whatever his knowledge about George Cheek's George Cheeks. The upcoming veiling of shops and inevitable employees in the cost reduction will further emphasize these relationships.
And Ellison's dynamics with journalists are put to the test 60 minutes remains in free fall according to Bill Owen's departure (although Tanya Simon's survey calmed down the employees for the time being) and a controversial agreement of $ 16 million against the Trump government, which was generally regarded as Quid Pro because it was approved at all. CBS News will also install an ombudsman who searches for bias what triggered fear among the employees. Acquisition talks with Bari Weiss' The free press Will raise questions about Ellison's politics, who described himself as a “socially liberal” person; So his father's continued close relationship becomes Donald Trump.
Many of the metaphors around Ellison play his love for flying – he received his pilot license as a teenager and has been running air stunts since then – as a Tom Cruise and every journalist in the city has called stands, tail leaders and loops to describe Ellison's approach to challenges.
But in Hollywood the more suitable analogy for Brad Pitt's could be First World War ZA film by Ellison, which was saved according to the budget, and an explosive climate scene made in Budapest (for the Red Square) was considered bad in the technical industry parlance. Ellison entered millions to rewrite and rewrite, save the film and start a summer blockbuster.
The irony was that the filmmacht team did this by becoming small: the third act of this 2013 film, which was rewritten by Damon Lindelof, was a much quieter and intimate ending in which Pitt carefully outwitted a single zombie.
The Hollywood meaning is difficult to overlook: sometimes the unexpected step saves the day. If you take a wrong step, you can devour.
Pamela McClintock contributed to this report.
This story appeared in the edition of August 6th of Hollywood Reporter Magazine. Click here to subscribe.