Paramount and Warner Bros. Will Become Skydance When the $110 Billion Merger Closes Tuesday

LOS ANGELES — The name of Hollywood's new giant is Skydance — the company David Ellison built from nothing, now elevated above two of the most storied names in the history of entertainment.

Ellison, the Paramount chairman and CEO, announced the name Friday in his first-ever post on X, four days before the roughly $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is expected to close on Tuesday, October 6. "What once was the peak, is now just the beginning," he wrote, unveiling a corporate identity that pointedly refuses to swallow either studio whole: Paramount and Warner Bros. will continue as standalone brands under the Skydance parent.

"Both have distinct identities, extraordinary legacies and brands that have resonated with audiences for generations," Ellison wrote. "We never wanted a new corporate identity to diminish, alter or overshadow either one. Instead, we wanted a name that would give the combined company an identity of its own while allowing Paramount and Warner Bros. — and all our extraordinary brands — to remain in the spotlight."

The choice is, in its way, the whole deal in miniature. Skydance began 20 years ago as Ellison's independent production company — the outfit behind Top Gun: Maverick and a string of Paramount tentpoles — and through a merger that swallowed Warner Bros. Discovery, the acquirer's name survives at the top of the org chart. "The name is ego-driven," Emarketer senior analyst Ross Benes told Reuters. "It reminds everyone that the most iconic Hollywood brands answer to Ellison and it is his company who won out."

He's not wrong, but it's also strategically clean. Anything that mashed "Paramount" and "Warner" together would have read as a compromise; anything invented from whole cloth would have felt corporate. Skydance is a real brand with real equity — moviegoers have seen the logo on a decade of hits — and it lets both century-old studios keep their names, their water tower and their mountain, exactly where they are. Hollywood has seen bigger branding swings land flatter; this one at least knows what it is.

The mechanics of Tuesday are already mapped out. Per a regulatory filing, Paramount Skydance Corporation becomes Skydance Corporation on October 6. Its Class B shares withdraw from Nasdaq after Monday's closing bell, ending the short, strange run of the PSKY ticker, and regular-way trading opens Tuesday morning on the New York Stock Exchange under SKYD. Warner Bros. Discovery shares disappear from the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100 — index funds are already rebalancing — with WBD holders receiving $31 a share plus a daily ticking fee that started October 1.

None of it could close until a federal judge said so. On September 30, U.S. District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín approved the consent decree resolving the Clayton Act suit brought by a California-led group of 12 state attorneys general, who argued the deal would create a media giant capable of driving up film and TV prices. She called the settlement a reasonable resolution of the dispute — and the commitments are unusually specific for Hollywood.

For five years, the new Skydance must release at least 30 theatrical films annually in the first two years — 20 of them wide releases — and 32 a year in years three through five. It must spend at least $300 million a year in additional U.S. production above 2025 levels, totaling $1.5 billion. It may not sell or close either the Paramount lot in Hollywood or the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank. And within 180 days of closing, it must seat a five-member editorial independence board overseeing CBS News and CNN — the news-division safeguard the states demanded.

The leadership picture is nearly as dramatic as the deal itself. Ellison remains chairman and CEO, focused on strategy, creative direction, technology and capital allocation, and Ynon Kreiz — the former Mattel chairman and CEO who took Barbie from toy aisle to billion-dollar movie — joins as co-CEO effective October 5 to run operations and integration. Below them, the deck is being reshuffled fast: Warner Bros. film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy are leaving, ending one of the longer-running executive partnerships on a major lot, while Paramount's Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein will oversee the combined studios.

HBO chief Casey Bloys runs unified streaming — and while HBO Max and Paramount+ will remain separate services, they'll be sold as a bundle, Deadline reported. David Zaslav, the Discovery chief who engineered the WarnerMedia merger four years ago, steps down. It has been quite a year for Warner Bros. — from a studio with a thesis to a division of somebody else's company in under twelve months.

It is worth remembering how close this came to going another way entirely. Netflix had agreed to acquire Warner Bros.' streaming and studio businesses before the broader Paramount bid moved forward — a deal that would have put HBO Max inside the world's biggest streamer. Instead, Ellison's Paramount prevailed, twelve states sued to stop it, and a September 21 settlement cleared the path to the judge's order nine days later.

What emerges Tuesday is an entertainment behemoth spanning film, TV and news: the studios behind Mission: Impossible and Harry Potter; HBO and HBO Max; Paramount+; CBS and CNN; MTV, TBS, Comedy Central, Food Network and Nickelodeon; and franchises including the DC Universe, Game of Thrones, The Lord of the Rings, Yellowstone and Top Gun — plus Paramount's own upcoming slate, like the G.I. Joe reboot now being built around Bradley Cooper. Rentrak data cited this week has the two studios releasing a combined 35 theatrical films next year.

The next checkpoints come fast: a Class B warrant distribution targeted for October 13, and the first unified financial picture with third-quarter earnings in November, when the co-CEOs present consolidated guidance for the first time. "We have big goals for Skydance, and we intend to pursue them with passion, imagination and a willingness to take smart risks," Ellison wrote Friday. "At the same time, we will honor what makes Paramount and Warner Bros. special — giving both studios the opportunity to grow, tell more great stories and bring those stories to even broader audiences around the world, powered by the scale and capabilities of Skydance."

Tuesday, the water tower gets a new landlord. The name on the paychecks changes; the names on the screens don't. In a merger saga defined by ego, litigation and brinkmanship, that's about as graceful an ending as Hollywood gets.